NEWS ANALYSIS : Unparalleled Voter Fury May Spur Ballot Box Revolt : Elections: Outrage crosses political lines. But frustration may result in low turnout in the state.

Pollster Mervin Field has just about seen it all in more than 40 years of taking the political pulse of California, but he says the voter mood has never been as feverish, cranky and unforgiving as it is today.

So much has gone wrong in the state in the past two years, Field said in an interview, that the 1992 election campaign holds the potential for the first true California voter revolt in modern times, perhaps ever.

“There is no parallel in California history,” said Field, founder of the Field Poll and a respected political analyst.

California voters are reaching “the snapping point,” he said. “They don’t see anything working . . . . The public really is ready to throw off the traces.”

Many experts agree with Field that California voters are so frustrated by governmental gridlock that many are inclined to vote for change--and against incumbents--even though they cannot be sure just where the change will lead. Others believe that the frustration will result, as it has many times in the past, in lower voter turnout in November.

Susan Estrich has heard the message so often and so vehemently on the Los Angeles radio talk show she has been host of that it blisters her ear.

“There is an amazing level of anger and outrage,” said Estrich, a law professor who toiled in Democratic presidential campaigns the past three elections. “It cuts across ideological and political lines. It’s not just Republicans or Democrats. It’s across the board.

“I think people will vote against anyone they possibly can,” she said. “This has got to be the world’s most frightening time to be an incumbent.”

The underlying list of complaints is familiar: freeway traffic, smog, crime, drugs and the turmoil of a society in transition. Add to that a deep recession, acute economic anxiety and the erosion of the security blanket that millions of Californians believed they always could count on: home equity.

Add the Los Angeles riots, outrage over the House of Representatives check and pay raise controversies, and the anger at officeholders who seem to ignore the issues important to their constituents. Throw in the fires, floods and earthquakes for good measure.

But it has been this summer’s state budget deadlock in Sacramento that has blown the lid off the political pot, Estrich and others believe.

In Sacramento, leaders point out the pressures that have led to the impasse and the complex and critical choices underlying the stalemate. But people see the state issuing phony money in the form of IOUs and legislators eligible to collect $100 a day in personal living expenses, Estrich said.

The public does not want to talk issues now, she said, summarizing the general feeling she hears from callers: “You knew this problem was coming. You knew these issues were coming. Why didn’t you put them on the table and start solving them?”

With many Californians ready to vote against anybody who they think represents the old political Establishment--or not bother to vote at all--candidates are scrambling for a way to capitalize on the bleak public mood, others for a way to survive it.

The traditional Labor Day start of the campaign still is three weeks away, and in many years the sweeping political trends that loomed large in summer evaporated by fall as voters return to their usual patterns. But there seems to be less certainty that this will happen in 1992.

Republican Sen. John Seymour is one example of a candidate steering a delicate course: an appointed senator in office for 19 months who has run campaign ads that do not even identify him as an incumbent senator, and that promise that he will “shake things up in Washington.”

“This is not the year to say: ‘I’m the incumbent, reelect me’ ” Seymour adviser Marty Wilson said. But he said the campaign will run ads this fall that will tout Seymour’s achievements in the Senate. “We’re not running from it (the record),” Wilson insisted.

Experts such as pollster Field believe that the mood for change favors the two Democratic Senate candidates, Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, both of whom enjoy double-digit leads in the opinion polls. Even so, the two women are not yielding to conventional political wisdom as perceived favorites might.

The accepted California campaign scenario demands that candidates focus almost exclusively on getting television exposure in the big media markets of Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego. Except for brief forays into the growing San Joaquin Valley and the Inland Empire, campaign trips to California’s nether regions are considered foolish.

But Feinstein, the former San Francisco mayor, just completed a campaign trip through sparsely populated areas of Northern California and has vowed to visit all 58 counties by Nov. 3.

Starting Monday, Boxer, from Marin County, begins a 17-day, “California highways tour” that will take her to 65 cities and towns, from Eureka on the North Coast to San Diego near the Mexican border.

In any other campaign year, the experts would jeer at such a waste of time and resources. In 1992, no one is second-guessing anybody else’s campaign strategy with much confidence.

Still to emerge is the campaign plan of former Los Angeles television commentator Bruce Herschensohn, a conservative Republican who is opposing Boxer for the six-year Senate seat held by Democrat Alan Cranston. He had hoped to capitalize on the debate skills he honed during 13 years of radio and television commentaries, often in combat with a liberal counterpart, such as former U. S. Sen. John V. Tunney.

Herschensohn challenged Boxer to weekly debates up and down the state. She declined, adopting the apparent front-runner’s role: Don’t give your lesser-known opponent a free forum. Meanwhile, Herschensohn has been largely out of public view raising money and developing a strategy to portray him as the outsider and candidate for change and Boxer as part of the Washington problem--one of those who had overdrafts on the House bank.

In the Bay Area, the danger signs for incumbents have not escaped the political radar of state Sen. Becky Morgan of Los Altos Hills. Morgan is a moderate, pro-choice Republican whose philosophy and credentials as a former businesswoman and teacher seem ideally matched to her district, which includes Silicon Valley and portions of the San Francisco Peninsula.

By any normal standard, Morgan faces token opposition in seeking a third term this year. She could afford the luxury of running a minimal campaign and breeze to victory. But this is 1992.

“My opposition would be considered insignificant in any other year,” Morgan said. “But not this year.”

Redistricting has pushed about 180,000 new constituents into her district, including voters who have had no reason to know anything about her or her record. “So I have a job ahead of me,” Morgan said.

Not all the experts see a stunning rejection of incumbent officeholders in the making. No matter the bleakness of the voter mood, more incumbents will win on Nov. 3 than will lose, they suggest.

Although voters may express collective anger at institutions such as the Legislature and Congress, they still tend to like their own lawmakers.

And voter options are limited in a general election: They have just two major party candidates from which to choose for each office, one Republican and one Democrat. In most cases, that choice also comes down to one known quantity, usually the incumbent, the less known major party challenger, and a host of unknown minor party candidates.

John Petrocik, a UCLA political science professor and expert on voting patterns, agrees that there is high public dissatisfaction and anxiety. But he said experience indicates that people in such a mood are more likely to stay home on Election Day than go to the polls to register a protest, or to support candidates who seem to reflect their desires for change.

The situation raises the old question of who votes and why. One view is that people vote for the things that the candidates represent or for some direct benefit to themselves, Petrocik said.

In fact, he said, the best studies indicate that people vote because they feel obligated to vote.

“It’s like why do they go to religious services? Because they feel funny if they don’t,” he said. Voter turnout campaigns will not work well unless they can promise the people some benefit, Petrocik added. And broad-based American political parties have difficulty doing that because their appeal is so general and vague.

Absent some compelling reason, the potential voters boil down to “those middle-class people who are motivated by that moral ethic, and who were going to vote anyway,” he said.

And the most likely result of the rebellion of 1992, Petrocik believes, is still another low voter turnout.

If people are frustrated, so are many officials who believe that they are laboring in the public interest.

“The people are angry,” Morgan said. “My personal frustration is to not be able to help the 744,000 people in the district understand the complexity of it, and I really empathize with their anger and frustration.

“This is not a process that I am proud of. I consider myself a responsible legislator and a problem-solver. People are looking for a simpler day. They want solutions.”

Pollster Field says that California voters who were in a protest mood tended to stay away from the ballot box. Even the Ronald Reagan revolution of the 1960s, the Proposition 13 tax protest of the 1970s, and the two-term limit movement of the late 1980s and early 1990s did not amount to true voter revolts, Field said, resulting in an instant turning-out of many incumbents.

In the past, when things went bad, there always was confidence of a turn for the better just around the corner: “We had a temporary setback. Tomorrow will be better and the next day will be a lot better,” Field said.

Now, many Californians no longer see that happening, and they may take out their frustration on incumbent politicians, whether those officeholders may bear any direct responsibility or not, Field said.

“The people who came to California sort of expected things to be better. They see we’re not No. 1 anymore and they’re in a state of shock,” he said.

The result? By the time the votes are counted on the morning of Nov. 4, the candidates with the most votes may not be the winners, just the survivors.