A frustrated electorate ousted Miami-Dade’s mayor in a historic recall election last year that signaled voters’ hunger for change, and distaste for business as usual at County Hall.

Ten months later, however, a new poll has found that voters are divided — and largely uninterested in — two proposed county charter amendments that could make it easier to mount citizen petition drives and dramatically alter term limits and salaries for county commissioners.

The Miami Herald/El Nuevo Herald poll on Miami-Dade issues and politicians indicates that the amendments, which garnered only tepid support, may be doomed. Early voting began Saturday for the Jan. 31 election.

Forty-one percent of likely voters said they plan to vote for the main proposal, which would limit commissioners to eight years in office beginning in 2012 while banning outside employment and raising their salaries to about $92,097 a year from $6,000. The same percentage said they plan to vote against it, with 18 percent of poll respondents undecided.

“Usually people who are undecided tend to vote ‘no,’ or don’t vote at all,” said Fernand Amandi, managing partner of Bendixen & Amandi International, the Miami-based polling firm that conducted the survey for The Miami Herald, El Nuevo Herald, WFOR-CBS 4 and Univisión 23.

“Of the two [amendments], this one likely has the lesser chance of passage.”

A slightly higher proportion of voters — 45 percent — said they favor the proposal that would double to 120 days the period allowed for collecting signatures to place petition initiatives for charter changes on the ballot. But nearly a third of respondents said they remain undecided.

“That doesn’t surprise me,” said Norman Braman, the Miami billionaire auto dealer who financed last year’s mayoral recall and pushed for charter reform. “I don’t think anybody is overly thrilled with the two amendments.”

The poll, which had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.9 percentage points, surveyed 400 voters between Tuesday and Thursday who said they will “definitely” vote in the election. Nearly four-fifths were Republicans planning to vote in their party’s presidential primary. Voters can cast charter-question ballots regardless of party affiliation.

Separately, the poll surveyed another 400 registered voters — 46 percent Democrats, nearly a third Republicans and about a fifth without party affiliation — on a variety of county issues, including cutting pensions and benefits of public employees.

Mayor Carlos Gimenez is at a standoff over that contentious issue with the County Commission, which rejected his plan earlier this month to impose an additional 5-percent health insurance contribution — bringing their total contribution to 10 percent — on some Miami-Dade workers to balance the county budget.

Gimenez could have a difficult time making his case to the public, The Herald poll suggests. Sixty-one percent of poll respondents said they oppose imposing significant pensions or benefits cuts on county and municipal employees.

The poll, however, did not ask respondents about layoffs. The mayor has framed the question in terms of benefits cuts versus job losses, saying the 5-percent concession is necessary to avoid sending pink slips to scores of employees. The commission approved a lowered property-tax rate budget last year based largely on anticipated steep union cutbacks.

“When I go out, people are overwhelmingly in support of what I’ve done, what I’m doing,” Gimenez told The Herald. “They support the fact that we need to get the concessions from labor in order to balance the budget and cut taxes.”

On other county questions, the poll showed general dissatisfaction with commissioners and the mayor, who was elected last June after the recall of Mayor Carlos Alvarez and Commissioner Natacha Seijas.

Fifty-eight percent of respondents rated the commission’s job performance as poor or mediocre, with only 22 percent calling the body’s work good or excellent.

“There’s not strong leadership coming from anywhere right now, and people are hurting. Therefore, who do you blame? The government,” Commission Chairman Joe Martinez said. “I understand where they’re coming from.”

For his part, Gimenez, who faces re-election in August, fared slightly better. His tenure received excellent or good marks from 38 percent of respondents; 43 percent called it mediocre or poor.

About a third of respondents said they would vote today for Gimenez’s re-election. Slightly less than a third said they wouldn’t, and 38 percent were undecided.

Gimenez, a Republican in the non-partisan mayor’s post, fared better with Hispanics and non-Hispanic whites than with blacks, and better with Republicans than with Democrats or independents. About half of the respondents who supported cuts to county employee pensions or benefits said they would re-elect Gimenez today, compared to only a quarter of those who oppose the cuts.

The mayor narrowly defeated rival Julio Robaina last June with 51 percent of the vote.

The poll also pitted Gimenez against a slew of lesser-known candidates who have filed to challenge him, and against Martinez, who says he is running though he has not yet opened an individual campaign account.

The winner in the matchup: Undecided, with more than half of those polled saying they did not know whom they would support. Gimenez came in second place, with 27 percent, and Martinez placed third, with 8 percent.

Though it may be early to ask voters about their intentions for the August mayoral race, the poll of likely voters in the Jan. 31 charter amendments election paints a picture of a still-divided electorate.

“Now is when people are starting to pay attention,” said Jorge Luis Lopez, a Coral Gables lawyer, County Hall lobbyist and member of the 2008 Charter Reform Task Force. “That’s why you see such a high number of undecideds.”

Two poll questions could shed more light on voters’ positions. Only a quarter of respondents said they followed the charter-reform debate very closely; of those, 57 percent said they plan to vote for the petition drives proposal. Forty-nine percent said they would vote for the question on commissioner term limits and salaries.

Poll respondent Angel Mederos, who works in insurance, said he does not know enough about the petition drives proposal, which, in addition to doubling the period for collecting signatures, calls for putting petition initiatives to voters at the next general election, instead of the existing requirement for an election within 60 to 120 days.

Yet he plans to vote for the second proposal dealing with commissioner term limits and salaries.

“People should earn well. I like to make money,” said Mederos, 46, of West Miami-Dade. “They have a lot of extra benefits, I know, but it is unacceptable to try to live on a salary from 1957. And they shouldn’t work for other companies — they should only have one job.”

On the other hand, Larry Archer, a 74-year-old retired pharmaceutical sales representative from Southwest Miami-Dade, said he plans to vote for the petition drives amendment but against the changes to commissioners’ terms and salaries.

“I would go for the term limits, but I think they should start right away,” he said. “If they’ve been there 17 years, they’ve been there too damn long.”

Braman, who successfully campaigned against a batch of charter amendments last year that he deemed too weak, agreed, calling the latest proposals the best that reform-minded commissioners could get their colleagues to approve on short notice, but still “cosmetic.”

Though noting he has not yet made up his mind, Braman said he is likely to vote against the petition drives amendment, saying it does not go far enough in making the petition process easier and cheaper.

As for the changes to commissioner term limits and salaries, Braman said he remains on the fence.

“It’s not reform,” he said. “If I vote for it, it will be holding my nose.”