Poll Watch: Tim Eyman’s Initiative 517 is sinking like a rock, new surveys show

It looks like our efforts to edu­cate vot­ers about the cost and con­se­quences of Tim Eyman’s ini­tia­tive on ini­tia­tive (I‑517) are start­ing to pay off. Hurrah!

The last two sur­veys to gauge sup­port for Ini­tia­tive 517 both show sup­port for the mea­sure drop­ping, and the most recent of the two — just released today — finds that oppo­si­tion to I‑517 is greater than the sup­port for I‑517, with just a week to go before Elec­tion Day. This is big news, and very good news.

The polls were con­duct­ed by the firms found­ed by Stu­art Elway (out of Seat­tle) and Bob Moore (run out of Port­land). Elway and Moore have both been con­duct­ing pub­lic opin­ion research in the Pacif­ic North­west for a very long time.

Here are the results from Elway’s poll:

Elway Poll on I‑517 of 413 reg­is­tered voters
Con­duct­ed Octo­ber 15th — 17th (land­lines and cellphones)
Mar­gin of error is plus or minus five per­cent­age points

Yes: 52% (25% def­i­nite­ly yes)
No: 25% (18% def­i­nite­ly no)
Unde­cid­ed: 23%

Elway pre­vi­ous­ly polled on I‑517 in Sep­tem­ber and found sup­port for the mea­sure at 58% and oppo­si­tion at 22%. Elway’s Octo­ber poll was most­ly con­duct­ed pri­or to the launch of the NO on I‑517 Coali­tion’s tele­vi­sion spot, “Get Ready”. Moore Infor­ma­tion’s poll, on the oth­er hand, was con­duct­ed after “Get Ready” had begun air­ing, and shows sup­port for I‑517 collapsing:

Moore Infor­ma­tion Poll on I‑517 of 500 like­ly voters
Con­duct­ed Octo­ber 23rd — 24th (land­lines and cellphones)
Mar­gin of error is plus or minus four per­cent­age points

Have already vot­ed or plan to vote

Yes: 33%
No: 40%
Don’t know/refused: 27%

Among those who have already vot­ed, Moore found oppo­si­tion was even high­er. 48% said they had vot­ed no on I‑517, while 28% said they had vot­ed yes and 24% did not know or refused to answer. That’s a very big gap between yes and no. If the trend holds, we could see I‑517 go down to defeat by a com­fort­able margin.

More insights from Moore:

Impor­tant­ly, inten­si­ty is stronger on the “no” side – among those who have yet to cast their bal­lots, 21% say they are a “def­i­nite” no vote, while only 11% are a def­i­nite “yes” vote.

There is plu­ral­i­ty oppo­si­tion to I‑517 in East­ern Wash­ing­ton and the Cen­tral Puget Sound region, but a plu­ral­i­ty of vot­ers resid­ing in the rest of West­ern Wash­ing­ton out­side Cen­tral Puget Sound favor the mea­sure.  Both Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans oppose I‑517, but Inde­pen­dents are sup­port­ive. There are also sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ences in sen­ti­ment by age – younger vot­ers (age 18–34) sup­port I‑517, while vot­ers age 35–64 are divid­ed and a plu­ral­i­ty of seniors are opposed.

It looks like we need to bol­ster our out­reach to young vot­ers. But it’s good to know that our cam­paign is mak­ing a difference.

The NO on I‑517 Coali­tion is one of the most diverse, bipar­ti­san cam­paigns ever assem­bled to oppose a bal­lot mea­sure in Wash­ing­ton State. It includes NPI and the Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, as well as the Main­stream Repub­li­cans and the Asso­ci­a­tion of Wash­ing­ton Busi­ness. Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee oppos­es I‑517, as does for­mer Attor­ney Gen­er­al Rob McKen­na, who he ran against last year.

Seat­tle’s major sports teams are on board too, as are most of the state’s retail­ers, from the inde­pen­dent and fam­i­ly owned gro­cers that belong to the Wash­ing­ton Food Indus­try Asso­ci­a­tion to the well-known super­mar­kets and home improve­ment stores that have pro­vid­ed finan­cial sup­port to the coalition.

As of this week, the coali­tion has raised around $600,000 in cash and in-kind con­tri­bu­tions. Most of the coali­tion’s donors are indi­vid­u­als or inde­pen­dent­ly-owned, fam­i­ly-run stores. The largest dona­tions to the cam­paign have come from Safe­way, Kroger, and the Wash­ing­ton Retail Association.

The Yes side has bare­ly report­ed rais­ing any mon­ey since the sig­na­ture dri­ve end­ed. Tim Eyman has min­i­mized his involve­ment in the cam­paign, and claims to be work­ing on an ini­tia­tive for 2014. Eyman and his asso­ciates’ I‑517 oper­a­tion remains under inves­ti­ga­tion by the Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure Com­mis­sion (PDC) for vio­lat­ing the state’s pub­lic dis­clo­sure laws dur­ing the ini­tia­tive’s sig­na­ture dri­ve last year.