Poll: Californians in a good mood about Jerry Brown, future

Sixty-one percent of Californians surveyed approve of Govenor Jerry Brown’s job performance.

Sixty-one percent of Californians surveyed approve of Govenor Jerry Brown’s job performance. Photo: Brant Ward / The Chronicle Photo: Brant Ward / The Chronicle Image 1 of / 4 Caption Close Poll: Californians in a good mood about Jerry Brown, future 1 / 4 Back to Gallery

Weeks into his fourth and final term, Gov. Jerry Brown enjoys record-high approval ratings from Californians who express more optimism about the future than they have in years, according to a new poll.

Sixty-one percent of Californians surveyed approve of Brown’s job performance, a big jump from the 41 percent who held that view when the Democrat took office for his second stint as governor in January 2011, according to the poll by the Public Policy Institute of California.

The survey found Californians in a good mood overall. Fifty-seven percent said the state is moving in the right direction, up from 50 percent in December and far better than the 38 percent who felt that way as California was hobbled by the recession and a budget mess in 2011.

A majority of those polled said better times are ahead, the institute said. Nearly two-thirds of respondents in the booming Bay Area felt that way, but even in the Central Valley, where the economy has been slower to recover, 56 percent said “good times” were more likely than not in the next year.

Even the Legislature, a longtime punching bag, is doing a good job, a majority of those surveyed said.

For the first time since the recession began washing over the state in 2007, fewer than half of Californians believe the state budget is a critical problem, the pollsters found.

“Budget worries are finally subsiding in California,” said Mark Baldassare, the institute’s president and CEO. Still, he said, “most Californians want their state budget to focus on paying down the debt instead of restoring social service funding” — respondents felt that way by 52 to 44 percent.

The survey also found voters willing to extend the Proposition 30 tax increases that Brown pushed in 2012 to balance the budget. The governor has not proposed an extension, though some legislative Democrats are calling for one. The initiative’s sales-tax increase expires at the end of next year, and income-tax hikes for the wealthy will be rolled back by 2018.

By 50 to 42 percent, the poll’s respondents favored extending the taxes, though there was a sharp partisan divide. Two-thirds of Democrats were on board with an extension, while two-thirds of Republicans were against it, the institute’s poll said. Independents are equally divided.

Respondents’ willingness to consider tax hikes even extends to a holy grail of California politics, Proposition 13, the 1978 measure that capped property tax increases. Although two-thirds of respondents said the measure has been good for the state, 54 percent said they would support a split-roll modification of the law.

That change, which would require two-thirds voter approval, would keep current caps in place for residential property but allow commercial property to be taxed according to market rate value.

The poll of 1,705 California adults was conducted from Jan. 11-20. Its margin of error among the general sample is 3.6 percentage points.

Carla Marinucci is The San Francisco Chronicle’s senior political writer. E-mail: cmarinucci@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @cmarinucci