At The Sacramento Bee, Dan Walters writes that the PPIC Poll asks respondents to rank state functions by budget size and then to list their own priorities.
Their answers – including those from the latest poll in January – consistently show that most believe that prisons get the most money, followed by health and human services, K-12 education and higher education. Very few respondents say they don’t know.
In fact, of those four major areas – which together constitute the vast majority of state general fund spending – schools by far get the most money, well over 40 percent, while prisons are last at about 9 percent.
Answers to the second question have been just as consistent – that K-12 education is the highest priority of voters, followed by health and human services, higher education and prisons.
In fact, therefore, the budget’s relative priorities are exactly those of voters – but they are blissfully ignorant of that, believing that schools are being neglected when they’ve enjoyed a 50 percent increase in per-pupil spending since Jerry Brown returned to the governorship six years ago.
The PPIC poll also reveals that Democrats are markedly more likely to be wrong about budget reality than Republicans, with 46 percent believing that prisons get the biggest share of spending.
