California voters are overwhelmingly unhappy with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the state Legislature, according to a poll being released today.

Just 27 percent of the 1,232 registered voters surveyed in a telephone poll this month approved of the job Schwarzenegger is doing, and only 16 percent approve of Sacramento lawmakers, according to the Field Poll. The bleak view of Sacramento politicians is shared by Democrats and Republicans and across demographic groups, poll director Mark DiCamillo said.

"It's a pretty dismal report, and there are really no real changes from what we saw last October," he said. "What's sort of overhanging these ratings is the huge budget deficit that the state has to deal with and the public is aware of. They are sort of bracing themselves for what is coming. ... And they fault legislative leaders and the governor for getting us into this situation."

A majority of voters - 59 percent - also said that Schwarzenegger, who will be termed out at the end of this year, will leave the state in worse shape than when he won office in 2003, after Gov. Gray Davis was recalled. At the time, he enjoyed some of the highest approval ratings of any governor ever elected - 64 percent. But his numbers have fluctuated drastically over the past six years.

"The legacy question is interesting - this is a governor who was elected as an outsider that would come into Sacramento and make a series of reforms, blow up boxes and make things better," he said. "The verdict from voters is that he has really failed in that effort. ... There's a great deal of disappointment."

By contrast, DiCamillo noted that Gov. Pete Wilson, who served from 1991 to 1999, enjoyed relatively positive reviews at the end of his tenure - 38 percent of voters said he left the state in better condition than he found it, 19 percent said it was worse and 40 percent said it was about the same. But Wilson, DiCamillo said, entered office at the beginning of an economic downturn and left at a time when the economy was fairly strong.

"A lot of what happens to governors is really dependent on the circumstances they find themselves in," he said. "But for Schwarzenegger, a lot also has to do with the fact that he said he saw the problems of Sacramento and got elected to do something about it, and the assessment of most voters is that he failed at that."

Schwarzenegger is also different from most politicians in that opinions of him are usually shared across party lines, DiCamillo said.

"When he was receiving very high ratings, he also was getting high ratings among Democrats," but the reverse was also true, he said. "When his ratings declined significantly, he also lost his own party. The rank-and-file Republicans have deserted him to a greater extent than you usually see."

The Legislature is viewed even more negatively, with a whopping 72 percent of those polled disapproving of its performance. Lawmakers haven't enjoyed majority approval since 1998, and DiCamillo said they have consistently received approval ratings of less than 20 percent in recent years.