Jerry Brown hangs onto shrinking support for tax hikes

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Gov. Jerry Brown is still winning his battle for tax hikes but support has slipped, according to a new USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll.

Fifty-five percent of registered voters favor the governor’s plan, listed as Proposition 30 on the November ballot. In May, support stood at 59%. Opposition to the plan remained at 36%.

The full story, including interviews with voters, ran in Friday’s newspaper. The USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences/Los Angeles Times poll surveyed 1,504 registered voters by telephone from Sept. 17-23. The margin of error is 2.9 percentage points. The poll was conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, a Democratic firm, and American Viewpoint, a Republican firm.

Support for Proposition 30 dips below a majority when voters were presented with the type of campaign talking points they might be bombarded with between now and the Nov. 6 election.

“An ongoing debate can make this very close,” said Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg. Eight percent of voters said they were undecided.

Brown’s tax initiative would increase the sales tax by a quarter cent for four years and income taxes on the wealthy for seven years. The governor says that after years of spending reductions, new taxes are the only way to prevent billions of dollars in cuts to schools.

The poll also gauged how voters feel about pension changes for public employees and a ballot initiative requiring special labeling for food with genetically engineered ingredients.

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-- Chris Megerian in Sacramento
twitter.com/chrismegerian