Fifty-nine percent of Orange County residents responding to a Chapman University poll said they support rent control, while just 41 percent opposed it.

That’s a major disconnect between local attitudes and laws.

Just one of Orange County’s 34 cities — San Juan Capistrano — has any form of rent control, and it’s limited to mobile homes.

And local city councils have repeatedly rejected calls for rent control in recent years.

The 60-40 split reflected in the Chapman poll also defies the expectation created by the makeup of survey respondents: Only 41 percent of the 706 people who took part are renters.

“I was surprised by how many people want rent control in Orange County,” said Fred Smoller, a Chapman associate professor of political science and lead researcher on the survey.

Chapman’s poll results were released just as a coalition of Santa Ana citizen groups announced a petition drive to get rent control on the November ballot.

Santa Ana joins six California cities where citizen groups also are seeking referendums on rent control. Among them are Long Beach, Glendale, Inglewood and Pasadena. Over the past 1 1/2 years, seven Bay Area cities held elections on whether to adopt rent control, rejecting it in five cities.

In addition, petitions are circulating to get a proposed statewide initiative on the ballot next November to repeal the 1995 Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act, which limits rent control in California to older apartments.

Landlord groups vowed to fight these efforts, calling rent control a bad idea that harms renters overall while usurping private property rights. Tenant rights groups maintain rent control is needed to promote community stability and protect renters from arbitrary move-out orders.

The Chapman results mirror other polls.

Seventy-percent of likely voters in Long Beach support rent control, a survey released recently by rent control backers shows. Fifty-eight percent of Long Beach homeowners were among rent control supporters.

“The poll results were no surprise,” said Josh Butler, executive director of Housing Long Beach, part of the group supporting the rent control initiative. “Long Beach residents want community-first protections that will support stable neighborhoods.”

A U.C. Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll released in September showed 55 percent of voters in Orange and San Diego counties supported rent control. Statewide, 60 percent of voters responding to the poll did as well.

In Los Angeles County, 68 percent of poll respondents supported rent control. Fifty-nine percent of voters support such a measure in the remaining Southern California counties of Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Imperial.