Poll Watch: Latest survey by Stuart Elway finds CarbonWA’s I‑732 is in huge trouble

Car­bon­WA’s poor­ly con­ceived I‑732 is under water and far­ing worse than the oth­er five ini­tia­tives cer­ti­fied to Wash­ing­ton’s bal­lot this year, accord­ing to a new sur­vey released this morn­ing by long­time poll­ster Stu­art Elway.

I‑732 would insti­tute a pol­lu­tion tax and use the pro­ceeds to low­er oth­er tax­es. Its pro­mot­ers say it’s rev­enue neu­tral, but the state Office of Finan­cial Man­age­ment and the Depart­ment of Rev­enue don’t agree.

The Alliance for Jobs & Clean Ener­gy last year test­ed the I‑732 bal­lot title and found it start­ed out at just 39%. Sub­se­quent polling by NPI found I‑732 at 52% in June of 2016 (which is bet­ter, but still pre­car­i­ous for a cam­paign out of the gate).

Now Elway, who was in the field from August 9th-13th, has found the following:

Car­bon­WA’s Ini­tia­tive 732

• For: 34%
• Against: 37%
• Unde­cid­ed: 30%

I‑732 does best with Seat­tle vot­ers (51% sup­port) and Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers (45%) — note the soft­ness of those fig­ures. It does the worst with Repub­li­cans (54%), which val­i­dates the Alliance’s crit­i­cism — which we agree with — that attempt­ing to craft an ini­tia­tive to appeal to Republican/conservative vot­ers was a folly.

Integri­ty Wash­ing­ton’s I‑1464 also clocks in with just 34% sup­port; how­ev­er, its oppo­si­tion only reg­is­ters at 23%. Car­bon­WA’s I‑732 is the only ini­tia­tive in Elway’s sur­vey with a high­er per­cent­age of vot­ers in the “against” col­umn than the “for” col­umn. It is the first thing vot­ers will see on their bal­lots statewide.

It should be not­ed that Elway’s sur­vey is of reg­is­tered vot­ers, not like­ly voters:

500 reg­is­tered vot­ers, select­ed at ran­dom from reg­is­tered vot­er lists in Wash­ing­ton state, were inter­viewed August 9–13 2016 by live, pro­fes­sion­al inter­view­ers. 36% of the inter­views were con­duct­ed on cell phones. The mar­gin of sam­pling error is ±4.5% at the 95% lev­el of con­fi­dence. This means, in the­o­ry, had this same sur­vey been con­duct­ed 100 times, the results would be with­in ±4.5% of the results report­ed here at least 95 times.

How­ev­er, 70% of respon­dents had vot­ed two or more times in the past four elec­tions, which sug­gests that most respon­dents in the poll will end up being vot­ers in the Novem­ber 2016 gen­er­al elec­tion. The remain­ing 30% of the sam­ple only vot­ed once in the past four elec­tions, or not at all.

Car­bon­WA does­n’t have the mon­ey to go up on tele­vi­sion or radio, or to do much of any adver­tis­ing at all. It seems their plan is to rely on word of mouth, earned media, and grass­roots orga­niz­ing to win. If their bal­lot title was strong, their idea sound, and the pro­gres­sive move­ment unit­ed behind them, that might be enough, in a pres­i­den­tial year, to sweep to vic­to­ry. How­ev­er, none of those things are true.

If the polling has con­sis­tent­ly shown any­thing, it’s that Repub­li­can and con­ser­v­a­tive vot­ers are hos­tile to I‑732. A few token endorse­ments from the likes of Repub­li­cans Mark Milos­cia and Bill Finkbein­er isn’t going to change that.

Car­bon­WA has repeat­ed­ly alien­at­ed pro­gres­sives — the very peo­ple who most want to address the dam­age to the cli­mate — while fail­ing to attract con­ser­v­a­tives to its cause. Its I‑732 was con­ceived out of the belief that a “rev­enue neu­tral” tax swap would engen­der broad bipar­ti­san sup­port. That’s not hap­pen­ing. The evi­dence sug­gests that the oth­er side’s vot­ers are going to give I‑732 a big thumbs down. And pro­gres­sive vot­ers are like­ly to be split. That’s a recipe for defeat.

Last Decem­ber, Car­bon­WA’s lead­er­ship con­tem­plat­ed not turn­ing in all of their sig­na­tures, and work­ing with the Alliance instead on an alter­na­tive plan. They ulti­mate­ly turned in their sig­na­tures and declared they were in it to win it.

But it looks like they’re going to lose.

Mean­while, Democ­rats are seek­ing to recap­ture the state Sen­ate while hold­ing the House. They need to pick up two Sen­ate seats with­out los­ing any.

If they’re suc­cess­ful, that could set the stage for a 2017 ses­sion in which Gov­er­nor Inslee’s cap and trade pro­pos­al might actu­al­ly get a vote.

Vot­ing in the Novem­ber gen­er­al elec­tion will begin in two months.