PROVIDENCE — Many more Rhode Islanders believe Democrat Barack Obama’s running mate, U.S. Sen. Joe Biden, has the experience “to become president if necessary” than the number willing to take that chance on Republican John McCain’s pick, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

Here in Rhode Island, only 33.8 percent think Palin, a first-term governor, has “the kind of experience necessary” to step into the nation’s top job compared to the 74.3 percent who believe Biden, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has the requisite experience, according to a Brown University public-opinion survey out yesterday that leapt from local to national political issues.

But the Brown survey also found some defections among those voters who said they voted for Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton over Obama in the Rhode Island presidential primary: while 60.5 percent said they would vote for Obama in November, 22 percent said they would vote for McCain. Others have yet to decide.

“I think the 22-percent figure suggests there is still lingering aftershocks from the long and bitter primary battle between Senators Clinton and Barack Obama,” said Brown University Prof. Marion Orr, the new director of the Taubman Center for Public Policy, in an interview yesterday.

On issues closer to home, 70 percent of the state’s potential voters think the state has gotten off on the wrong track, and close to 58 percent rate Republican Governor Carcieri’s job performance as “fair” to “poor.” The poll also attempted to gauge where Rhode Islanders stand on an issue captivating radio talk show audiences that Carcieri has made one of his signature issues: illegal immigration.

Only 5 percent of those surveyed in August listed “illegal immigration” among the top priorities they wanted the federal government to address. Job creation, economic growth, energy and the cost of gasoline took precedence.

This time, the Brown pollsters asked a different question: Should federal immigration authorities cease their workplace roundups of “undocumented immigrants” as a number of clergy nationwide, including Rhode Island’s Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas J. Tobin, have suggested? The response: 56.3 percent said the workplace raids should continue; 30.7 percent said they should stop; others interviewed said they were either uncertain, did not know or would not answer.

Orr said he was initially surprised by the response since the issue did not rank high among people’s priorities in the last poll. But he said the findings seem to emanate from the same sense of economic anxiety — and need to place blame — that might explain both Carcieri’s relatively low job-approval numbers and the number of people who believe the state has veered off course.

“My sense again is that people feel like they are being hurt economically, unemployment is very, very high and they may have the sense that the jobs being held by undocumented immigrants are jobs that they and/or their friends and relatives [should] get … and any effort to root out employers who are hiring undocumented immigrants would be supported by those respondents,” he said.

Conducted Monday and Tuesday of last week, the random telephone survey of 652 registered voters carries a margin of error of plus or minus 3.8 percentage points. Thus, Orr acknowledges Obama’s standing among Rhode Island voters may not have changed much.

(Orr this year contributed $500 to Obama’s campaign, and previously contributed a total of $400 to the campaigns of Lt. Gov. Elizabeth Roberts and $200 to Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline, according to state campaign-finance reports and the Center for Responsive Politics. Contacted last night, Orr said that Taubman Center research administrator Jack Combs directs and conducts the surveys, and that he merely announces the results. He also noted that he made the Obama donation before his appointment as director took effect.)

The poll found Obama leading McCain, 47 percent to 34 percent, in overwhelmingly Democratic-leaning Rhode Island. In August, he led McCain 50 percent to 30 percent. But the difference in numbers for both candidates between then and now is within the margin of error, so Orr said the latest poll does not necessarily reflect a marked change in how voters view them.

As to what is more important to voters: 55 percent said they would vote for the person who will bring “greater change” to national politics, while 35 percent favored the “more experienced and tested” candidate.

On the local front, Carcieri — in his second and last term — has slid from a 59-percent approval rating in January 2007 to 44-percent approval a year ago to 39 percent in this latest poll.

The Carcieri administration has been at the center of recent stories about the state’s hiring of companies that employ suspected illegal immigrants, a war with the largest state employees union, evaporating budget savings and the first end-of-year deficit in memory attributed to overspending. But Orr said Carcieri’s poll numbers more likely reflect the economic difficulties that Rhode Islanders are contending with in their own lives in a state with one of the highest unemployment and foreclosure rates in the country. “They are pointing a finger [at] Governor Carcieri … as the man in charge. They are putting some responsibility for this on him.”

Carcieri spokeswoman Amy Kempe noted that the poll was taken while the financial crisis on Wall Street was unfolding last week, and suggested that might account, in part, for more than two-thirds of Rhode Islanders saying the state is headed in a wrong direction. (In an August poll, 78 percent of those questioned said the state was heading in the wrong direction.)

She said the governor does not view the poll results as a reflection on him personally since he believes he is “addressing the issues that are important to Rhode Islanders,” such as “holding the line on taxes” and reducing state spending, but “I do believe it may be related to the economy and people’s concerns [about] the economy.”

Among top state officers, only Lt. Gov. Elizabeth Roberts has seen a steeper drop in her approval rating — 24 percent — from 30 percent last winter and 37 percent a year ago. In her case, Orr noted, a relatively large number of people, 32 percent, said they had no opinion.

With reports from Journal staff writer Gregory Smith.

kgregg@projo.com