SurveyUSA validates NPI’s finding that most Washingtonians want an assault weapons ban

For the sec­ond time in as many days, Sur­veyUSA and its Wash­ing­ton State part­ners have released a key poll find­ing that val­i­dates NPI’s research.

Yes­ter­day, Sur­veyUSA’s find­ing of a dou­ble dig­it lead for Pat­ty Mur­ray in the 2022 Unit­ed States Sen­ate race was released and report­ed on by The Seat­tle Times and KING5. Today, the focus is Wash­ing­ton’s sup­port for an assault weapons ban.

Sur­veyUSA found that 61% of respon­dents favor a ban and 34% are opposed.

We showed last month that a major­i­ty of like­ly 2022 vot­ers (56% in our sur­vey) sup­port a ban on assault weapons, with 52% in strong sup­port.

We also found 38% opposed and 8% not sure.

We rolled out the data in Kent at a press con­fer­ence with Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son, State Sen­a­tor Man­ka Dhin­gra, State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jami­la Tay­lor, and Emi­ly Cantrell of the Alliance for Gun Respon­si­bil­i­ty.

Each local Seat­tle tele­vi­sion sta­tion cov­ered our press con­fer­ence, and each pub­lished a sto­ry about what we found. After those sto­ries ran, right wing activists and trolls began attack­ing our research, argu­ing it could­n’t be credible.

“Less than 1,100 sur­veyed,” griped a com­menter call­ing them­selves Dan Barn­hart, not real­iz­ing that a sam­ple size of 1,100 is huge for a state-lev­el poll. “What a joke. That is far less than 1% of this states pop­u­la­tion. You put these bogus sur­veys out lead­ing peo­ple to think thats [sic] what the major­i­ty want. In fact you sur­vey peo­ple in masse [sic] until you find a per­cent­age you want!”

The joke is on Barn­hart. What mat­ters in polling is not the size of the sam­ple, but how rep­re­sen­ta­tive it is. It isn’t fea­si­ble to call mil­lions of peo­ple simul­ta­ne­ous­ly and get their opin­ion. Nor is it nec­es­sary to obtain cred­i­ble, valid data. That is why poll­sters build sam­ples. Like a scale mod­el, a sam­ple is a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the views of an entire pop­u­la­tion or sub­set of the pop­u­la­tion, like the elec­torate. All poll­sters use sam­ples, regard­less of who they work for or are aligned with, and most state-lev­el polls uti­lize sam­ples of 400, 450, 500, or 600.

“If the sur­vey is done cor­rect­ly, it could be accu­rate,” said some­one called “Alas­ka on a motor­cy­cle,” respond­ing to Barn­hart. “How­ev­er, my bet is the sur­vey was done in Seat­tle. A high per­cent­age of those want communism.”

Wrong, “Alas­ka on a motor­cy­cle.” Most of the peo­ple who took our June 2022 statewide sur­vey weren’t from Seat­tle or even King Coun­ty. Our sur­vey found that even vot­ers in East­ern and Cen­tral Wash­ing­ton back an assault weapons ban.

“Think about it, a pro­gres­sive polling group only polled 1,200-ish peo­ple,” sneered Tim Tay­lor. “Of course the [sic] polled their vot­ers. Most of them are unable to make their own deci­sions and fol­low the spout­ed jargon.”

Actu­al­ly, our sur­vey includ­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tive per­cent­ages of Trump vot­ers, Repub­li­cans, and inde­pen­dents along with Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers and Biden vot­ers. It was­n’t just pro­gres­sives who were interviewed.

A sam­ple can’t be rep­re­sen­ta­tive if only one seg­ment of the elec­torate is includ­ed. And if a sam­ple is not rep­re­sen­ta­tive, then the ensu­ing data will be worthless.

The week after we unveiled our find­ing, Bon­neville’s Dori Mon­son added his voice to the right wing cho­rus trash­ing our work. In a rant on his show, Mon­son griped that NPI’s research should­n’t have got­ten the cov­er­age it did and scold­ed reporters and pro­duc­ers for tak­ing our cred­i­ble, rig­or­ous polling seriously.

Here we are about one month lat­er. The valid­i­ty of our assault weapons ban research has now been affirmed by an entire­ly sep­a­rate poll backed by KING5, The Seat­tle Times, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Washington’s Cen­ter for an Informed Pub­lic, and Wash­ing­ton State University’s Mur­row Col­lege of Communication.

Sur­veyUSA’s find­ing of 61% for an assault weapons ban sug­gests that sup­port may have grown in a bit in the past month, since it’s a few per­cent­age points high­er than what we found. How about that, eh Dori?

Mean­while, the gun lob­by opt­ed to respond by cir­cu­lat­ing a nation­al poll find­ing from Quin­nip­i­ac to claim that sup­port for ban­ning assault weapons is decreasing.

“Sec­ond Amend­ment Foun­da­tion founder and Exec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent Alan M. Got­tlieb said this is clear evi­dence the pub­lic is wak­ing up to the real­i­ty that gun bans are not the answer to vio­lent crime,” one press release said.

Actu­al­ly, data shows — and the rest of the world com­mu­ni­ty’s expe­ri­ence proves — that keep­ing guns out of the hands of peo­ple who should­n’t have them works. Oth­er advanced coun­tries have extreme­ly low rates of gun vio­lence because they have passed strong gun safe­ty laws that pro­tect their people.

The gun lob­by may not agree with our pro­posed ideas for address­ing gun vio­lence, includ­ing an assault weapons ban. But cred­i­ble, rig­or­ous data shows that our ideas are pop­u­lar. The peo­ple like them. They want them.

Wash­ing­to­ni­ans have vot­ed for three con­sec­u­tive gun safe­ty ini­tia­tives (in 2014, 2016, and 2018) and every gun safe­ty idea we’ve ever test­ed in our polling has found major­i­ty sup­port, includ­ing ban­ning high-capac­i­ty mag­a­zines and pro­hibit­ing the car­ry­ing of guns at local gov­ern­ment meet­ing places and elec­tion sites. Now, our assault weapons ban polling has been inde­pen­dent­ly cor­re­lat­ed by anoth­er one of the most trust­wor­thy poll­sters in the industry.

Our thanks to Sur­veyUSA and its part­ners for ask­ing this ques­tion and pub­lish­ing the results. It’s great to have this data avail­able to study.