Lingle’s job rating
tops Legislature’s
Voters think Lingle is doing a
better job, a Star-Bulletin poll finds
Gov. Linda Lingle fared better than the state Legislature in the eyes of voters, the Star-Bulletin/KITV-4 News poll has found.
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Forty-two percent of the voters said Lingle is doing a better job, 19 percent said the Legislature is doing better and 13 percent said neither. More than one-fourth of the respondents, 26 percent, said they did not know.
"I really appreciate the public giving us time to see what we can do, and I think they've been generous in their assessment," Lingle said.
Senate President Robert Bunda said the results are not a bad reflection on the Legislature considering the effort Lingle puts into public relations.
"The public relations, up on the fifth floor (of the Capitol), made themselves much more visible than the Legislature has," Bunda said.
The poll was conducted by telephone from July 29 to last Tuesday by SMS Research. The margin of error was plus or minus 3.7 percentage points.
The poll found 46 percent of respondents had a favorable opinion of Lingle while 15 percent had an unfavorable opinion. Twenty-two percent were neutral and 17 percent had no opinion.
In the 2002 general election, Lingle received 52 percent of the vote to win the governor's race.
When the voters were asked to grade Lingle's job performance, 16 percent rated it excellent, 40 percent said good and 27 percent gave her a fair rating. Nine percent rated Lingle's job performance poor, while 7 percent said they did not know.
In his second year as governor, Lingle's predecessor, Ben Cayetano, received a 1 percent excellent performance rating, 37 percent good and 49 percent fair rating. Twelve percent thought he was doing a poor job, while 1 percent was undecided, according to a Star-Bulletin poll conducted March 1996.
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