Poll Watch: Tim Eyman’s I‑1125 and Costco’s I‑1183 will be close, respected poll indicates

For the last sev­er­al years, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton’s Cen­ter for Sur­vey Research has tak­en the pulse of Wash­ing­ton’s elec­torate each autumn, in the weeks lead­ing up to Elec­tion Day. The Cen­ter’s sur­vey, known as the Wash­ing­ton Poll, has suc­cess­ful­ly pre­dict­ed the out­come of many fierce­ly con­test­ed bal­lot mea­sures, includ­ing the defeats of I‑933 and I‑1033 in 2006 and 2009.

This year’s Wash­ing­ton Poll has just been released as of late this evening, and it indi­cates that Tim Eyman’s I‑1125 and Cost­co’s I‑1183 are going to be close… pos­si­bly extreme­ly close. The poll, which sur­veyed nine hun­dred and thir­ty eight reg­is­tered vot­ers across Wash­ing­ton between Octo­ber 10th and today (Octo­ber 30th), found sup­port for I‑1183 at 50.3% and sup­port for I‑1125 at 41.4%. Oppo­si­tion stands at 42.8% and 40%, respectively.

The num­bers break down as follows:

Sup­port for I‑1125

Oppo­si­tion to I‑1125

The total num­ber of unde­cid­ed vot­ers (those with­out a pref­er­ence) is fair­ly high, at 18.7%. This fig­ure indi­cates a lot of vot­ers are not famil­iar with I‑1125 yet.

It is cer­tain­ly encour­ag­ing to see that the num­ber of cer­tain Nos is high­er than the num­ber of cer­tain Yeses. This sug­gests that our efforts against I‑1125 are start­ing to bear fruit. Keep Wash­ing­ton Rolling, the anti-1125 coali­tion that NPI belongs to, is present­ly run­ning sev­er­al tele­vi­sion and radio ads against the mea­sure with the help of Microsoft and Boe­ing, which have col­lec­tive­ly put up close to a mil­lion dol­lars to get the mes­sage out. One spot fea­tures Doug Mac­Don­ald and Sid Mor­ri­son, the for­mer Trans­porta­tion Sec­re­taries, explain­ing how 1125 would threat­en our state’s abil­i­ty to com­plete vital road projects.

To beat I‑1125, we need to con­vert the rel­a­tive­ly low num­ber of weak Nos into strong Nos, and move a lit­tle more than half of the unde­cid­ed vot­ers into the No col­umn. Unde­cid­ed vot­ers tend to break against poor­ly thought out right wing bal­lot mea­sures when the oppo­si­tion does a good job explain­ing the con­se­quences. We’ve clear­ly got much more that needs to be done in terms of out­reach between now and Novem­ber 8th.

Mean­while, the num­bers for I‑1183 don’t look as encour­ag­ing. I‑1183 has been in the news a lot, and Cost­co is spend­ing a record $22.5 mil­lion this year alone to sell I‑1183. Their ad blitz is hav­ing an impact; the Wash­ing­ton Poll shows sup­port for I‑1183 at just over 50%. But the Pro­tect Our Com­mu­ni­ties coali­tion (of which NPI is a part) isn’t far behind. Take a look at the numbers:

Sup­port for I‑1183

Oppo­si­tion to I‑1183

The Wash­ing­ton Poll puts the num­ber of unde­cid­ed vot­ers at 6.9%. Clear­ly, more peo­ple have an idea of which way they’re going to vote on I‑1183 than I‑1125. To win, Pro­tect Our Com­mu­ni­ties has to con­vince all of the unde­cid­ed vot­ers in this poll to vote no and con­vince some of those lean­ing yes to vote against.

When in doubt, peo­ple tend to vote no on bal­lot mea­sures, so Pro­tect Our Com­mu­ni­ties needs to refine its crit­i­cism of Cost­co’s ads, which make a lot of too-good-to-be-true promis­es. It won’t be enough for the cam­paign to sim­ply point out that Cost­co is try­ing to buy the elec­tion (though it is good for vot­ers to know who’s behind I‑1183). Pro­tect Our Com­mu­ni­ties has to debunk Cost­co’s false promis­es and paint a stronger pic­ture of the hid­den con­se­quences of I‑1183.

Cost­co’s media con­sul­tants are going all-out to sell I‑1183, and the results of this poll reflect that. Cost­co is doing all it can to blunt the effec­tive­ness of Pro­tect Our Com­mu­ni­ties’ mes­sage — putting first respon­ders into its own adver­tis­ing, claim­ing that pas­sage of the mea­sure will increase state rev­enue, and so on. Pro­tect Our Com­mu­ni­ties needs to respond to these coun­ter­mea­sures with its own.

Grant­ed, the only tru­ly defin­i­tive poll is the elec­tion itself, which is hap­pen­ing right now. All of the evi­dence we have sug­gests that I‑1125 and I‑1183 will be close. To cross the fin­ish line first, Keep Wash­ing­ton Rolling and Pro­tect Our Com­mu­ni­ties will need to cam­paign aggres­sive­ly in the last week and try to reach as many vot­ers who have not already vot­ed as possible.

The Wash­ing­ton Poll also looked at how the 2012 guber­na­to­r­i­al and pres­i­den­tial races are shap­ing up, though those con­tests are a year away from being decid­ed. The poll found Rob McKen­na lead­ing Jay Inslee, 44.9% to 38.4%, with 17.6% unde­cid­ed. It also found Barack Oba­ma lead­ing both Rick Per­ry and Mitt Rom­ney by a com­fort­able mar­gin. Oba­ma polled bet­ter against Rom­ney (54% vs. 50.2%), though Rom­ney him­self did­n’t poll any bet­ter than Per­ry (both men got 40.7%).

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, respon­dents told sur­vey­ors that the econ­o­my and the reces­sion were the biggest issues on their minds.

High unem­ploy­ment was specif­i­cal­ly cit­ed as a concern.

The poll also asked respon­dents how they would vote if there was a bal­lot mea­sure con­cern­ing mar­riage equal­i­ty next year. 47% said they would strong­ly sup­port such a mea­sure; 31% said they would strong­ly oppose. 8% said they were inclined to vote yes and 7% said they were inclined to vote no.

The remain­ing 7% were undecided.

These num­bers sug­gest that a ref­er­en­dum to over­turn a mar­riage equal­i­ty bill would fail, which is very encouraging.

The Leg­is­la­ture ought to enact a mar­riage equal­i­ty bill in the 2012 leg­isla­tive ses­sion and advance the cause of civ­il rights in Wash­ing­ton. The right wing would undoubt­ed­ly try to force a ref­er­en­dum on the bill, but they’d be doing so in a pres­i­den­tial elec­tion year, with high­er than usu­al turnout.

Mov­ing for­ward next year would seem to be a risk worth tak­ing. It cer­tain­ly feels like the time has come. Wash­ing­ton should be in the van­guard of the mar­riage equal­i­ty move­ment, not bring­ing up the rear. We’ve banned dis­crim­i­na­tion on the basis of sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion. We’ve done domes­tic part­ner­ships… twice.

Now it’s time for the real thing: Full mar­riage equality.

Speak­ing of turnout, Sec­re­tary of State Sam Reed has fore­cast turnout for this year’s elec­tion at only 47%. If the pre­dic­tion holds true, it’ll mean that less than half of Wash­ing­ton’s vot­ers will be decid­ing the fate of I‑1125 and I‑1183.

POSTSCRIPT: Here’s a few fast facts about the Wash­ing­ton Poll.

• First con­duct­ed in 2006
• Has suc­cess­ful­ly pre­dict­ed the out­come (suc­cess or fail­ure) of every bal­lot mea­sure that it has polled, with the excep­tion of I‑985 in 2008 (but the poll did show sup­port for I‑985 weakening).
• Prin­ci­pal­ly inves­ti­gat­ed by Dr. Matt Bar­reto, Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Polit­i­cal Sci­ence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Washington.
• Admin­is­tered over the phone by live callers, based on a ran­dom­ly select­ed list of phone num­bers using a pub­licly avail­able list of reg­is­tered voters.
• Both land­lines and cell phones were includ­ed in the list.
• Aver­age twen­ty-eight min­utes in length.
• Results have a 3.2% mar­gin of error.

For more infor­ma­tion, please see the Wash­ing­ton Poll web­site.