Poll after poll confirms that Californians consider Gov. Gray Davis to be a chronic and perhaps unsalvageable underachiever.

His current job approval ratings, scarcely over 20 percent in the three major statewide polls, make him the least popular governor in recorded California history, and the deep disdain cuts across virtually every economic, cultural and political subgroup.

So California voters would jump at the chance to dump him and elect someone else to fill out the remaining 3 1/2 years of his second term, right? Not necessarily.

The same polls that catalogue Davis' unpopularity also indicate that voters are, at best, lukewarm about a pending recall election, clearly concerned about the uncertainty of filling the governor's chair with someone else, and about the cost of a special election.

That ambivalence -- disliking Davis intensely but not exactly thrilled about recalling him -- is demonstrated in a new Field Poll. And it indicates that a highly focused, heavily financed and overwhelmingly negative campaign by Davis -- just the type of campaign he's waged in the past and gives every indication of waging this time -- might well save him the ignominy of becoming the first California governor to be ousted in midterm.

There is, however, a gigantic caveat attached to Davis' hopes of surviving by trashing the recall, its sponsors and anyone who puts his or her name on the ballot as a would-be successor. The Field Poll and other surveys of voter opinion indicate very strongly that Davis' position is deteriorating, not improving, and that he must arrest that decline to have a good chance of prevailing.

The Field Poll found that 54 percent of registered voters and 51 percent of likely voters would vote now to remove Davis, and 39 percent of registered voters and 43 percent of likely voters would oppose a recall. That leaves very few voters undecided, which is fairly astonishing given that the recall petition drive has not yet been certified, no election has been called, and no would-be replacements have filed for places on the ballot.

The good news for Davis is that the recall isn't ahead by much; the bad news for him is that support for the recall has grown since Field last tested the issue in April, and the state's massive budget crisis plays a major role in that trend. If he and the Legislature would agree on a "satisfactory state budget" within a few weeks, the Field Poll found, it could tip voters against the recall. The survey also found that having no "prominent Democrat" as a potential successor would also bolster Davis' chances of survival.

The Field Poll results, which certainly mirror those in Davis' private polling, point the way to the strategy he will pursue in resisting the recall, even if the election is held in the fall. The anti-recall, pro-Davis forces are already pursuing litigation aimed, it seems evident, at delaying the election until next March, when Democrats would be turning out strongly to choose a presidential nominee. It's generally assumed that a fall special election -- in September, October or November -- would work against Davis because the state's problems would be fresher in the minds of voters and those angriest with the governor would be more likely to turn out and cast ballots.

Davis is already hitting hard on the cost of a special election, something in excess of $30 million, for a state that's already billions of dollars in the hole, and on the "right wing" sponsors of the recall petition drive, especially Congressman Darrell Issa, who personally financed the signature-gathering effort.

Field and other pollsters stress that they capture a snapshot in time, at best, and thus cannot predict actual election results, and the boilerplate disclaimer is especially appropriate in this environment, when we don't know when the recall election will be held, whether the state's fiscal crisis will deepen, which Republicans might run as successors, or whether any prominent Democrats will break ranks and place their names on the ballot as well. Any one of those uncertainties has the potential to tip the balance one way or the other.

The only semi-certainties now are that there will be a recall election and that Californians are conflicted about it.