Voters in Pennsylvania are fed up with their state government.
According to the latest F&M Poll, 82% believe the state government needs to be reformed, with Gov. Tom Wolf and the GOP-controlled state legislature seemingly incapable of cooperation and the Office of the Attorney General mired in scandal.
67% of PA voters feel the state is “on the wrong track,” while just 21% think PA is “headed in the right direction,” the poll shows – the highest and lowest those have numbers have been since F&M began asking the question in January 2010.
38% said government and politicians are the most important problem facing PA today. Governor Wolf, the state’s most powerful politician, is seeing his popularity dwindle as the budget impasse rolls into its eighth month.
Just a third of voters think Wolf is doing an excellent or good job, down 3% from October. Less than half – 49% – of Democratic voters think the Governor did well in his first year in office.
52% of those polled blamed the state legislature for the record-long budget impasse, while 32% laid the blame at Wolf’s feet. Slightly more voters trust Gov. Wolf over the legislature to save PA from a “train wreck,” 42%-39%.
Three-quarters of Democrats and half of Independents blame the legislature, though just 26% of Republicans find them at fault.
This poll was conducted by the Center for Opinion Research at Franklin & Marshall College. They surveyed 732 registered Pennsylvania voters from January 18th to January 23rd. The margin of error is +/- 3.6%
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9 Responses
Wolf and unions are sucking us tax payers down a deep hole, as always, our politicians have done it before, grab your feet and hang on!
Governor Wolf is the sole cause of the budget impasse. His blanket veto stopped the funding of schools, etc. Now he is using their financial problems in a spin to get his policies through without any compromise.
And yes, I am a college educated registered Democrat!
Tom Wolf won the election for one reason and one reason only. The PSAA blamed the down fall of the patron saint of The Church of Penn State, Joe Paterno, on Tom Corbett. They would have voted for Milton Street if it meant voting against Tom Corbett. He has no mandate of any kind.
It could be that Tom Wolf and the House and Senate Republican leadership are not such opponents as the media and political narrative may make it appear; they could be two sides of the same dysfunctional, low growth coin that is taking us in the wrong direction.
Statistics support the feeling. Commonwealth Foundation has a fascinating analysis of “out migration” from Pennsylvania. Births exceed deaths by 13, 326 and international immigration was 35, 94, total 49,268 and yet total population grew by 8,736. Young people of working age are leaving for opportunities elsewhere.
FTA Last year, Pennsylvania lost one person to another state every 12.5 minutes. In total, the state’s net domestic migration rate was negative: 41,607 more people moved out of Pennsylvania than moved into the commonwealth.
This exodus is nothing new. The state’s net migration rate has been negative since at least 2011.
This raises an important question: How do policymakers create economic growth and attract more people to Pennsylvania?
http://www.commonwealthfoundation.org/policyblog/detail/demographics-destined-to-hold-pennsylvania-back
How people still get this impression baffles me. The old Corbett budgets were bad, people voted for Wolf to do something different, the legislature rejected Wolf’s new budget and proposed a near clone of a Corbett budget, Wolf said no. One side of this equation is doing what the public voted him in to do, the other is clinging to what their donors pay them more and more each cycle to do. What side are you on?
The legislature did its job by passing a rational budget. Gov. Wolf is playing hardball because the budget does not reflect his ideology. The fact that Gov. Wolf refuses to allow funding of essential services shows just how ideological his actions are.
The legislature did its job. Gov Wolf is playing hardball, refusing to sign because it doesn’t fit his ideology. The fact that he refuses to alloow essential services to be funded during this impass makes his game-playing obvious.
It looks to me as if whoever answered this poll must not be working people or they only get their news from PA
state employee websites! I guess that they want their taxes raised more than the other 49 states combined?! Hurray for the state
legislators who voted the Wolf tax plan down!
We the people voted Gov. Wolf In to balance the budget and correct the tax system so we can lower property taxes. Why don’t you help him do that??