A few weeks after the fire destroyed the area, many Angelenos were unhappy with Mayor Karen Bass’ leadership, a new poll has found.

A new survey co-organized by The Times found that just about 40% of registered voters in the city thought Bass was doing poor or very poor work in dealing with fires, while only 19% said they characterized her response as good or good. More than one in five city residents thought she was doing a fair job, but the rest had no opinions.

The bass was “injured,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of the Government Institute’s polls and a longtime California poller. “Obviously, the fire effect is damaging her image, drawing all this true, strong negativity in a given quarter.”

“Unfortunately, this fire is a huge event, and I don’t think it’s easy for voters to push this aside,” DiCamilo said. “I think it will last for months.”

Bass took office in 2022, and was supported by a wide coalition and a wall of democratic support that helped her billionaire mall mogul Rick Caruso, despite Caruso’s burdens.

As a candidate, Bass vowed to stop the city’s vast homeless crisis, which seriously tainted the legacy of her predecessor, Eric Garcetti. And she certainly thought that her work performance would be judged in her ability to stop the suffering she exposed on the streets of LA.

But since her tenure, at the helm of the second largest city in the country, fate and ferocious winds deal with very different hands.

The success of the Democratic leader, and the outlook for the second term, almost certainly depends on the fire recovery, and the impression that Angelenos has already formed during the disaster that defines the city.

The Palisade fire killed 12 people, destroyed thousands of homes, and virtually unrecognised the coastal enclave. As the fire became out of control in the western part of the city and county, the Eton Fire exploded eastward, destroying the town of Altadena. Bass and Los Angeles City Council are responsible for the city of LA, but the County Board of Supervisors has jurisdiction over the non-embedded Altadena.

After being abroad when the fire exploded on January 7th, Bass flopped in her first response – freezing in the face of reports, dodging criticism from the fire chief after her, straining her relationship with her own recovery emperor and other leaders. last week, Bass Foes has launched a campaign to recall She received financial support from Silicon Valley philanthropist Nicole Shanahan. Former running buddy of Robert F. Kennedy Jr..

“The mayor is focused on recovery and now she’s hopeful a few months ago, and she continues to move that forward,” said base spokesman Zach Seidl, citing the long list of relief and reconstruction for wildfire survivors, the practical recovery rates for Palisades, and the rapid pace of debris removal.

Other local officials likewise had anemia ratings in polls. 21% of city voters described the 15-person city council fire response as good or good, with 19% of county voters saying the same thing about the five-person county board of supervisors.

However, respondents say they are far more negative than about any of these legislative bodies, with 28% saying the supervisory board is doing poor or very poor work, while 27% say 41% based on the same thing as the city council.

Voters in Los Angeles County surveyed were generally warm towards the government Gavin Newsom, with 35% saying they thought he had a good job or a great job, while 32% thought he was doing poor or very poor jobs. Another 16% thought he was doing a fair job, and 16% had no opinion.

The outlook for the governor, who is also a Democrat, was more loving within the city. 40% of LA residents approved his wildfire response, while 26% thought he had done a poor or very poor job.

Given the weathering of public scrutiny and negative media attention base, it was no surprise that her approval ratings suffered, said Ange-Marie Hancock, former USC chair of the Department of Politics and International Relations, currently heading the Kilwan Institute for Race and Ethnic Studies at Ohio State University.

“Criticism really focuses on her leadership, not her city council, not her soup,” Hancock said using colloquial terms from the County Board of Supervisors.

Despite the relatively limited power of the Los Angeles mayor, the base has become the face of a fire reaction that many Angelenos consider to be a flaw, Hancock said.

“People who have experienced this type of trauma fire have said, “That’s why it happened. “This is why it happened.

And alongside substantial critique, race and gender will probably play a role in some of the attacks on Bus, the city’s first woman and second black mayor. She has become a bug for the right-wing media in the weeks since the fire was explicitly racist and gender-based speed clearly confronted on social media.

But Angelenos also had a calm view of the base’s ability to advance the city in the aftermath of the fire.

More than half of the city’s residents said they were “not too many” or “a little” confident about the bus that helps Los Angeles lead through recovery, but more than one in three residents said they were “very” or “somewhat” confident in her leadership. More than one in ten people said they had no opinion.

Bass’ performance was seen most negatively in the city’s northeastern and east, and the West Side. The ratings were less negative in the South Los Angeles and the Port area.

Demographic data for urban residents only was not available, so county-wide data applies.

All of Los Angeles County, where one in four registered voters live in California, older residents are somewhat more likely to say buses do a good job, with about a quarter of those over 50 saying she’s doing a good job or doing a good job. She received the lowest mark from the young residents.

There was gender disparity, and women ranked bass performance negatively than men.

Black voters in Los Angeles County looked at her a little more negative than others, with 23% saying she was doing a good or good job, while Asian and Pacific Islander respondents ranked her performance as good or good. White respondents gave her a higher mark, with 20% saying she did an excellent or good job in response to the fire, while Latinos responded similarly, with 18% winning her fire response as good or good.

Voters in college and graduate education counties were far more likely than others to think of bass as poor or extremely poor jobs.

There was also a correlation between income levels and views on how bass played during the fire.

Around half of county voters, who exceeded $100,000 a year, thought that Base had done poor or very poor work in response to the fire, but those earning between $40,000 and $99,999 were less important, and residents with county residents under $40,000 were the least important to her job performance.

The ratings lined up in the opposite direction of Newsom, with county residents more likely to approve his fire job performance if they earn more money or receive a higher level of education.

Naturally, there is a strong relationship between work performance and party affiliation, with Democrats far more likely than not being critical of the bass, with independents rating her a little more harshly, and Republicans viewing her most negatively. The collapse of Newsom’s ratings was also very partisan.

Angelenos gave the local fire department a much higher mark, with 73% of county residents thinking the Los Angeles County Fire Department did a good or good job, and 71% say they say the same thing at the Los Angeles Fire Department.

The Times voted last in favor of bass. It was the eve of her 100th day in office when half of the city’s residents said they approved the job she was doing, and half of the citizens said they approved the job she was doing. According to a Suffolk University/Los Angeles Times poll, it was the eve of her in office.

Although there are few comparisons between Apple and April (the 2023 Suffolk poll asked about overall job performance compared to the fire-specific questions from the new poll), the contrast was that the deep reservoir on the base was early in her tenure, with some erosion of its support.

Bass will again vote in 2026. This is a reelection campaign that looked like a glide pass before the fire. It remains unclear whether a serious challenger will take part in the race, but if so, bass can play a real fight with her hands.

Her 2022 opponent, Caruso, has been fiercely criticizing the base leadership since the fire, and has openly flirted with her second bid for the mayor.

The Berkeley IGS poll was conducted online in English and Spanish from February 17th to February 26th, more than a month after the fire broke out.

We surveyed 5,184 registered voters in Los Angeles County. This total included an oversample of 272 registered voters living in the Palisade fire zone and 293 registered voters living in the Eton Fire Zone. The margin of error can be inaccurate. However, the estimated error in the Los Angeles County voter survey is 2% points, and the margin of error for Los Angeles voters is 3% points.