SurveyUSA has the five tax-raising propositions on the California ballot May 19—1A, 1B, 1C, 1D—going down to defeat. This is in line with other recent polls. The lineup on opinion here looks a lot like that in the October 2003 recall election. Independents look very much like Republicans, and very much unlike Democrats.
The only region going for higher taxes is the San Francisco Bay Area; Los Angeles County, heavily Democratic these days in most partisan elections, votes about the same as the Inland Empire, which gave a small margin to Barack Obama in 2008 after giving a small margin to George W. Bush in 2004. It’s interesting that Arnold Schwarzenegger, the beneficiary of the recall vote, is now on the other side, campaigning heavily for the ballot propositions.
This looks like the Tea Party phenomenon writ large: ordinary people concerned about the large and seemingly untrammeled expansion of the public sector.
