Rasmussen is out with their latest poll on the California budget crisis which is being reported as showing Californians don’t want taxes – but in fact suggests the reality is more nuanced. While I’d prefer to take my cues on public attitudes on the budget from more intensive research, and would certainly choose the Field Poll over Rasmussen any day, it’s still worth drilling down a bit to see what this tells us.

The pollsters want us to come away from their results believing that Californians prefer spending cuts to taxes. And when it’s framed in that general language, that’s exactly what we see:

3) Suppose the state of California must decide between filing for bankruptcy, cutting back on services, or raising taxes. Which option would you prefer?

15% Filing for bankruptcy

43% Cutting back on services

28% Raising taxes

14% Not sure

Except, as KQED’s John Myers points out, California cannot declare bankruptcy. Trust us, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s explored that option, and it’s just not possible. So already Rasmussen is presenting some pretty flawed results.

Further, if voters think they can avoid a tax increase by cramming someone else down, they’ll do it – but only to a point. Vague “spending cuts” are one thing, but what happens when you get specific? Things change somewhat. While 63% of voters would support cutting state worker pay by 14% instead of a tax increase (and Rasmussen doesn’t explain that such a wage cut would not only fail to close the deficit, but would have massively negative economic consequences for everyone else), their attitudes differ when other victims of cuts are named:

5) The Governor has also said that California may have to eliminate the state’s main welfare program and cut back on health care services for the disabled and the elderly. If you had a choice between cutting these programs or raising taxes, which would you prefer?

31% Cutting these programs

52% Raising taxes

17% Not sure

Of course, those cuts to the disabled and elderly have already happened, and Cal-WORKS has been hit hard by cuts in 2008 and 2009. But this shows that public services remain popular, and that Californians aren’t quite as Hooverist as the other poll questions indicate.

There’s still plenty of room for Sacramento Democrats to propose a tax increase to help fund core services like family assistance, health care, education, and public transit. While the debate over federal aid to help the state’s budget crisis is still unfolding, it’s time that legislators began building the case for progressive revenue policies to avert an economic and human disaster in the upcoming budget cycle.

UPDATE: A new Field Poll is out, this one on approval ratings of the governor and the legislature, which are predictably very low (27% approval for Arnold, 16% for the legislature). 59% of voters say that Arnold will have left state government in worse condition than he found it. I want to know who the 7% are who said he’s made it better (30% said “about the same”).