Pennsylvania voters, who don't hold a very high opinion of the performance of state legislators, overwhelmingly favor term limits for their lawmakers and, by a slimmer margin, would like to see the Legislature trimmed.

Those were among the key findings of the latest effort by Quinnipiac University to take the state's political pulse.

When it came to Gov. Ed Rendell and his proposals to tweak the property tax system, they were all over the map.

Voters gave the second-term governor a healthy overall approval rating, with 55 percent supporting his performance and 36 percent disapproving.

But a bare majority disapproved of his handling of the property tax issue. At the same time, by a margin of 56 percent to 39 percent, a majority supported the administration's plan to raise the state sales tax rate by 1 percentage point -- from 6 percent to 7 percent in most of the state, and from 7 to 8 percent in Allegheny County and Philadelphia -- with part of the new revenue to be used to reduce property taxes.

The survey, conducted May 22-28, tested an electorate that rejected another administration tax plan in the May primary. In referendums in the state's school districts, voters spurned a plan to pay for property tax cuts by hiking the income levy.

A plurality of voters, 47 percent to 39 percent, said they didn't like the job the Legislature was doing. By a margin of 51 percent to 32 percent, they favored a smaller Legislature. And by the margin of 75 percent to 19 percent, they supported term limits in Harrisburg.

The Legislature was unpopular across Pennsylvania, particularly in this corner of the state. Just 27 percent of Allegheny County residents and 24 percent of the voters from elsewhere in southwestern Pennsylvania approved of the job the Legislature is doing.

The public was split on Mr. Rendell's plan to lease the Pennsylvania Turnpike to private operators. Forty-four percent supported the concept while 42 percent were opposed, a difference within the survey's theoretical margin of error of plus or minus 2.7 percent.