Most Orange County residents disapprove of President Trump’s job performance, strongly support gun control, support a path to permanent U.S. residency for undocumented immigrants and are willing to tax themselves to fight homelessness, a new Chapman University poll released this week shows.

On the issue of Trump and how he’s handling his job as president, 63 percent disapprove, while 37 percent approve.

Meanwhile, 60 percent say the country is headed in the wrong direction, while 31 percent believe the country would be better off if Democrats controlled Congress vs. 27 percent who prefer Republican control.

Even more – 71 percent – say government doesn’t do enough to regulate access to guns, while 29 percent say current gun control laws go too far.

The poll results are one of several recent signs that Orange County voters are shifting toward more moderate-left positions, the authors said. The poll comes less than two years after local voters broke in favor of Hillary Clinton over Trump, the first time since 1936 that Orange County favored a Democrat for president.

“It’s one more indication we are no longer a red county,” said Fred Smoller, a Chapman associate professor of political science and lead researcher for the poll.

“I’m surprised to see these things in Orange County.”

Signs of a political shift actually have been around for awhile, surfacing in the mid-1990s when Democrat Loretta Sanchez unseated incumbent GOP House Rep. Bob Dornan in a district that includes Santa Ana and much of Anaheim. Since then, demographic shifts and a rise of “decline to state” voter registrations, particularly among younger people, have helped to push other congressional districts closer to blue.

The survey indicates the trend is becoming more pronounced and hints at potentially competitive congressional races throughout Orange County in the fall, Smoller said.

“The 65- to 75-year-old white male who came to Orange County after World War II is not changing his views,” Smoller said. “But Orange County is changing. It’s more young, more Latino and more Asian.”

The poll is based on a phone survey of 706 participants from Feb. 6 through March 4. The margin of error is 3.7 percent. Forty-one percent said they are closer to the Republican Party, 38 percent said they are closer to the Democratic Party, and 21 percent said they don’t identify with either.

Just 37 percent identified themselves as conservatives, while 33 percent claim to be moderates and 31 percent identify as liberals.

The poll also hinted at strong partisan divides.

While Orange County voters overall do not approve of Trump’s job performance, three out of four Republicans do. Ninety-five percent of Democrats do not, Smoller said. A majority of people who don’t identify with either party also don’t approve of Trump’s job performance.

Republican central committee member Deborah Pauly, a former Villa Park councilwoman, questioned Smoller’s objectivity and said she would look on the survey “with a raised eyebrow.”

“It flabbergasts me that any poll from Orange County would say anything like this,” Pauly said. “It’s pretty clear to me that this poll, and the way it was conducted, was to drive an agenda and reach a foregone conclusion.”

Michael Schroeder, a prominent Orange County political activist and former state Republican chairman, said parts of the survey sound credible, but he questions whether some of the responses accurately reflect Orange County attitudes.

For example, he questioned the finding that 63 percent of voters support a quarter-cent sales tax hike to fight homelessness.

“Orange County is pretty tax-phobic,” Schroeder said. “I doubt that an initiative like that would pass in Orange County.”

But it’s not surprising that Trump got a low approval rating here since he didn’t carry Orange County, Schroeder added.

“The trick is in how the question is raised,” Schroeder said. For example, the gun control question didn’t focus on a specific policy, it just asked if government does enough to regulate access to guns.

“The devil is always in the details with gun control questions,” he said. “This question doesn’t really move the ball down the field very much.”

The results also show more residents are pro-immigrant, in contrast with the county’s image, burnished by a recent backlash to California’s “sanctuary state” law.

The city of Los Alamitos voted March 19 to exempt itself from the state law, and the Orange County Board of Supervisors and several local cities plan to support a Trump administration lawsuit against the state.

In the Chapman poll, however, 64 percent of participants say immigrants contribute more to the economy than they take, and 83 percent support a way for undocumented immigrants to stay in the country legally. Seventy-eight percent also support Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, which provides legal status for undocumented immigrants who came to the country as children.

“I don’t think we are where we were under (former Gov.) Pete Wilson and Prop. 187,” Smoller said, referring to the Orange County-backed measure from 1994 that would have established a citizenship screening initiative in the state and cut undocumented immigrants from programs such as public education.

“We’re conservative on (immigration), but not as conservative as we were.”

Other survey highlights include:

70 percent say climate change and global warming are caused mainly by human activities; 30 percent say they are caused mainly by normal climate cycles.

79 percent say the threat of climate change is somewhat serious or very serious; 21 percent say it’s not.

64 percent say stricter environmental laws are worth the cost; 36 percent believe environmental laws cost jobs.

Asked to name the biggest problem facing Orange County, the highest number of participants – 27 percent – cited housing affordability. The second-largest number – 24 percent – cited poverty, homelessness and welfare.

COMING IN REAL ESTATE SUNDAY: Eight in 10 Orange County residents prefer detached houses to townhomes, condos or apartments, according to the Chapman poll. But a third said they’re considering leaving Orange County because of high housing costs.