SPRINGFIELD - After a bitter yearlong war of wills against the state Legislature, Gov. Rod Blagojevich's public approval rating remains dismally low, according to a new Post-Dispatch/KMOV-TV poll.

But the Legislature's approval rating is even lower.

In an illustration of the old political adage that everyone gets dirty in a mud fight, poll respondents gave Blagojevich a "favorable" rating of 42 percent - one of the lowest of his five years as governor - while hitting the General Assembly with an even worse 37 percent.

Those grim numbers come after Blagojevich and his fellow Democrats who control the Legislature presided over the near-shutdown of state government last year in their protracted battle over spending priorities and other issues. The series of highly publicized showdowns held up funding to school districts around the state for a time, and earlier this month came within days of crippling public transit in Chicago.

"People are just sick of nothing getting done," said Del Ali, pollster with Research 2000.

While the public partly blames legislators en masse for that meltdown, Blagojevich remains the face on the conflict, even among Democrats.

"I hate the governor we've got right now. I'd be willing to vote for anybody else," said Democratic voter Larry Bender of Perry County, one of the poll's respondents. "He won't take anybody else's advice. He's kind of like the president."

(That isn't a compliment in Illinois, where the poll found President Bush even less popular than Blagojevich, with an approval rating of 29 percent.)

The Research 2000 poll was conducted last week, with telephone interviews of 800 likely Illinois voters who vote regularly in state elections. The poll has a margin for error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

The poll was paid for, in part, by The Pantagraph and other Lee Enterprise newspapers in Illinois.

The often-personal conflicts between Blagojevich and other state leaders have been so sharp that there already has been talk in Springfield that one or more statewide Democratic elected officials may challenge him in the 2010 Democratic primary if he attempts a third term. Attorney General Lisa Madigan and state Comptroller Dan Hynes both have been openly critical of the governor and could conceivably mount in-party challenges (though neither has publicly said as much).

The poll asked Democratic respondents a consider a hypothetical primary battle between Blagojevich and state government's other five statewide elected officials (all Democrats), and came up with a good news/bad news answer for Blagojevich: The good news is, none of the five would beat him; the bad news is, two-thirds of Illinois Democrats would vote for someone other than him if they could.

"If he was up (for re-election) this year, I think he would be toast," said Ali, the Research 2000 pollster. "That's the bright light for the Republicans in 2010 - Blagojevich's numbers."

Among the issues still unresolved in Springfield is how to pay for a major new statewide road rebuilding plan that all sides agree is needed. The funding mechanism backed by Blagojevich and many others is a major expansion of casino gambling in the state -another idea that Illinoisans generally don't like, the poll found. A total of 36 percent of respondents said they agree with the expansion plan, while 53 percent disagreed.

"I just don't see how we can try to use gambling as a cure-all," said poll respondent John Sauer of Belleville. "It's just sucking money out of the economy. They don't build those fabulous palaces because they're losing money."

Blagojevich's top crusade issue - providing universal health care coverage - did better in the poll, with 52 percent of the respondents agreeing with Blagojevich's often-stated opinion that it's the single-most important issue facing Illinois.

But the poll also indicates that Illinoisans are getting tired of the way Blagojevich has pressed some of his agenda goals in the past: by employing his unusual amendatory veto powers to unilaterally change legislation after it's passed. Some legislators allege Blagojevich has abused that power, virtually rewriting law on his own, and that such power should be eliminated.

A large majority of poll respondents seemed to agree, with 65 percent saying they disagree with allowing a governor to have that much power.

However, the same respondents were much more positive about the way in which Blagojevich most recently used that amendatory veto power: his alteration of a bill earlier this month to provide free use of public transit systems to all senior citizens in Illinois.

The idea was controversial in the Legislature because many legislators felt Blagojevich foisted it on them without any discussion, and that the cost to the state will be significant. But only about 18 percent of poll respondents appeared to share those concerns, while 71 percent said they agreed with the move.