Department of Transportation workers fish vehicles from the water following the Skagit River Bridge collapse May 23.
OLYMPIA, June 4.—A pair of polls released Monday come to wildly differing conclusions about public support for a transportation tax package, but demonstrate how the current $8.4 billion proposal might be justified to the folks back home – and show that as always, with polls, it’s all in how you ask the question.
A poll from Seattle’s Stuart Elway shows Washington voters turning thumbs-down on the transportation package 54-40, even after the stunning collapse of the Skagit River Bridge May 23. But another poll from Seattle’s EMC Research, conducted for the Keep Washington Rolling coalition, indicates voters think it is “important” for the Legislature to pass a transportation package this year, 69-29.
The real battle, of course, is less for Washington’s 4 million registered voters than the 147 voters who occupy seats in the Washington state Legislature. Transportation advocates are hoping for an up-or-down vote in the Legislature on the transportation package sometime before the end of the current special session, without a referral to the ballot. Though a repeal initiative or referendum might be expected, the coalition of business, labor and environmental groups pushing for a tax increase this year maintains that a decision by the Legislature might be more easily defended. And that certainly might be one way to read the results.
Both polls were conducted at roughly the same time – June 1 and 2 for EMC, May 18-30 for Elway. Both used a large enough sample to reduce the margin of error to 5 percent or less – 400 registered voters in the case of Elway, 600 for EMC. And while some of the interviews for the Elway poll took place before the bridge collapse, there is enough of an overlap to lead one to conclude that there is a phenomenon at work. The apparent contradiction seems to demonstrate one of the oft-heard truisms at the statehouse about public opinion polling on tax issues. When questions emphasize taxes, support plummets. When questions emphasize the benefits that a tax increase might provide, support rises.
Questions are Very Different
EMC poll shows 69 percent of Washington voters think passage of transportation package is important. Support declined only two points when a price tag was mentioned.
All things being equal – and few pollsters would say they are – the difference appears to be in the questions that were asked. There’s also the fact that Elway used human interviewers; the EMC poll used the common robo-polling technique. The differences in the questions, though, are most striking.
While the EMC poll probed voters’ opinions about road safety and maintenance concerns, Elway’s interviewers put more emphasis on the taxing element. Elway’s scripted interview began by observing that “of course transportation projects are expensive and take a long time to complete,” and concluded with, “as I said, transportation projects are expensive. The other part of the package will be how to pay for those improvements. No one likes to raise taxes, but as I read some funding options, tell me whether you would favor that proposal, be inclined to accept it, be inclined to oppose, or find it unacceptable.”
Elway poll put the question a different way and got a strikingly different result: When taxes were emphasized, voters said no 54-40.
The EMC survey question put things in a rather different way, asking voters whether it is important for “the legislature to pass a statewide package this year to address congestion and safety issues, fund road and bridge maintenance and improvement, and provide additional transit funding.” A subsequent question mentioned a price tag, citing a $9.5 billion figure, reflecting the size of one of the early proposals in the Legislature. Yet when the cost was mentioned, support decreased only slightly, to 67-28.
The EMC poll showed that support for the transportation package is higher among Democratic voters than among Republicans, though it is favored by a majority of both camps. Some 89 percent of Democrats agreed passage was important this year, while the number was 58 percent from Republicans. Sixty percent of independents supported the idea.
What’s it All Mean?
In his newsletter, Elway said his findings demonstrated that public opinion hasn’t changed much since the collapse of the Skagit River Bridge. “Apparently it takes more than an interstate freeway falling into a river to persuade voters to raise taxes for transportation improvements,” he writes. He notes that opposition appears to have softened somewhat since his last poll on the subject in March, but there still seems to be significant opposition to all of the major financing mechanisms that have been mentioned. A gas tax increase is opposed 63-35, a license tab increase is opposed 53-46, and highway tolling is opposed 52-46.
“Advocates for transportation improvements can find encouragement in the movement of public opinion,” Elway says. “But if the collapse of a bridge on I-5 does not stir a majority of voters to find any form of taxation acceptable to pay for transportation improvements, then passing a comprehensive transportation package is still a tall order.”
The EMC poll posed a rather different question, one that reflects the heightened awareness of road maintenance and repair issues that have come to the fore in the last 10 days. By a whopping 71-27 margin, Washington voters agreed they are concerned about “the condition and safety of Washington’s roads, highways and bridges.” It posed another question about one of the most controversial elements of the package, the funding of a new Columbia River bridge. Even after the $450 million state appropriation is mentioned, voters agreed the project was important by a 74-22 margin statewide. Support was only slightly lower in the 3rd Congressional District, which covers the area, 66-21.
Makes Point About Mood
No appetite for a legislative referral to the ballot, but plenty of support for a measure passed by the Legislature: Steve Mullin, president and CEO of the Washington Roundtable.
What the EMC poll shows is that when the public is reminded what the transportation package would do, support is strong, says Steve Mullin, president and CEO of the Washington Roundtable, one of the key players in the transportation coalition. Though the Skagit bridge collapse is generally conceded to have been caused by a catastrophic accident – a shearing of bridge trusses by a semi with a too-tall load — rather than by long-term maintenance problems, Mullin says the incident has heightened public awareness of transportation needs.
“I think the citizens of this state don’t expect a bridge to collapse when one or two beams get hit by an oversized load. So I think it has become much more clear in the public mind that we have significant maintenance and preservation work that we need to do. Yes, it is true that the immediate cause of the bridge collapse was the impact of the oversized load, but it is also true that that the design of the bridge from the mid-‘50s has no redundancy and it is not anywhere near what a current standard might be. Obviously there has been a significant amount of press coverage since the bridge collapsed, and I think that my strong sense is the citizens of this state understand that we have a lot of work to do on maintenance and preservation and they clearly support maintenance and preservation as a high priority in terms of transportation spending.”
Mullin said the transportation coalition figures it would be easier to defend a package already approved by the Legislature than it would be to seek an up-or-down vote from the public at large. It is one of the lessons of the 2005 campaign, when the Legislature passed a transportation tax increase and opponents forced the issue to the ballot with Initiative 912. That repeal measure was defeated at the polls. “If the Legislature were to enact a package and a signature gathering effort was conducted to force it to the ballot, I think there would be support for a campaign,” Mullin says. “I don’t sense a lot of interest if the Legislature forces it to the ballot. We have had success in defending actions of the Legislature before, so I think we are very comfortable with the notion of running a campaign to support an action of the Legislature. We are much less comfortable and there is much less interest in funding a campaign for a legislative referral.”
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