PROVIDENCE — With three-quarters of Rhode Islanders now convinced the state is headed in the “wrong direction,” most of the state’s politicians — and especially Governor Carcieri and Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline — are taking the heat, according to a new Brown University poll.

Democrat Cicilline saw the most precipitous drop, as his standing sank from 64 percent in the last survey to 51 percent. Republican Carcieri’s approval rating slipped from 44 percent in September to a new low of 40 percent, despite his aggressive public-relations campaign of recent months to try to win back public support.

But not since 1991, when the state was reeling from both banking and budget crises, have so many Rhode Islanders told a pollster they believe the state is headed in the “wrong direction.” In that September 1991 state survey, 75 percent thought the state was off on the wrong track. Now almost as many — 74 percent — feel that same degree of pessimism again.

Only 16 percent believe the state is headed in the “right direction.” And the pessimism has increased dramatically from just last September when 57 percent believed it was off on the wrong track, but 31 percent still believed Rhode Island was headed in the right direction. That has since dropped by half.

Darrell W. West, the Brown University professor who oversaw the weekend poll of 739 randomly selected voters, attributes the sinking poll numbers to a confluence of events — including a tanking national economy, a state budget crisis and lingering public unhappiness over the handling of the Dec. 13 snowstorm that paralyzed traffic and stranded children on school buses late into the night.

Statewide and nationally, “the economy is completely apart,” West said. And, it’s not a random headline in the newspaper. “It’s what they are feeling in their own lives,” he said. “When people start losing their jobs and having difficulty making ends meet, their level of pessimism rises dramatically.”

In Cicilline’s case, West surmised the 13-percentage point drop was exacerbated by residual feelings about how his administration handled the midday snowstorm that tied his city in knots and the mayor agrees.

Yesterday, Cicilline called the poll a reflection of the fact that “many people think we dropped the ball on December 13 and they are right … There were a whole series of ways that both I and the city dropped the ball.” In the weeks since, he said he has hopefully “addressed” all of those issues by instituting “improved communications and coordination and some leadership changes.”

Lt. Gov. Elizabeth Roberts also took a hit, which West attributed to the fallout from the snowstorm. Her approval rating dropped 7-percentage points to 30 percent.

With respect to Carcieri, West said, dismay over the state’s budget situation has “helped push his numbers down.”

But Carcieri’s popularity numbers have dropped 19 points since January 2007. He is not the first governor to drop below the 50-percent divide. Former Gov. Bruce Sundlun’s low point was 19 percent in September 1994 and former Gov. Edward DiPrete’s was 16 percent in July 1990.

But the term-limited Carcieri’s drop off in popularity has been steep since he won reelection in November 2006. After the first big drop last September, he launched an aggressive campaign to get his message out “unfiltered” with frequent appearances on talk radio. Looking at the most recent poll findings, West said: “it didn’t work.”

“People’s assessments are influenced much more by what they are seeing in their personal circumstances … [than] how politicians try and spin the situation,” West said. “People are worried about the economy. They don’t like all of the budget proposals that have been put forward and they want better results than they are getting.”

But Carcieri chose to look at the upside. A statement issued by his office said: “By wide margins, Rhode Islanders support the Governor’s efforts to significantly reduce state personnel costs, to privatize state services, to reform the state welfare system and to make Medicaid more effective for Rhode Island seniors. And like the Governor, Rhode Islanders also oppose broad-based increases in the income and sales taxes.”

As for the governor’s standing, spokesman Jeff Neal said: “We are dealing with the largest budget problem since the credit union crisis. At the same time, people are becoming increasingly anxious about the slowdown of the national economy. It is not surprising that those issues are reflected in this poll.”

The survey, conducted Saturday and Sunday at Brown University by West in his capacity as director of the Taubman Center for Public Policy and the John Hazen White Sr. Public Opinion Laboratory, also scoped out public response to the widely divergent solutions offered by different sides in the current budget-cutting debate.

One side wants to make deep cuts in state services; the other wants to raise taxes for the rich and close “tax loopholes” to spare programs and avert the need to throw thousands of people off state-subsidized health and welfare programs. Among the findings:

A majority favor layoffs of state employees (52 percent); changing the public employee work week from 35 to 40 hours (71 percent support); increasing public employee contributions to their health plans (68 percent support); making changes in Medicaid that would encourage senior citizens to use visiting nurses instead of nursing homes (63 percent support); imposing a two-year limit on welfare benefits (71 percent support) and privatizing housekeeping, janitorial, and dietary services at some state institutions (55 percent support).

But they are against reductions in state aid to communities by a 60-to-28 percent margin; against reductions in subsidized health care for low-income families and against any increases in state income or sales taxes — except when it was phrased as “raising income taxes on high-wage earners.” When phrased that way, it elicited 61percent support, 31 percent opposition.

Raising the capital-gains tax rate — which was just recently reduced by two-thirds — drew a more mixed response: 42 percent in favor, 43 percent opposed, with no answer from the other 15 percent.

From these mixed findings, Mark Reynolds, chief executive officer of Neighborhood Health Plan of Rhode Island, concluded: “The results show that most Rhode Islanders consider low-cost health care for children to be a good state investment.”

Only 19 percent rated the job that House Speaker William J. Murphy is doing as good-to-excellent; only 15 percent for Senate President Joseph Montalbano. Both have dropped, albeit marginally, since September.

Among top-tier state officials, only Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch, Treasurer Frank Caprio and Secretary of State A. Ralph Mollis escaped the downslide. Each inched up two to three points.

Overall, the poll had a margin of error of about plus or minus 4 percentage points.

kgregg@projo.com