King Coun­ty vot­ers are say­ing yes to a pro­pos­al to increase the region’s invest­ment in pub­lic lands and green spaces, sug­gest­ing a good out­come for King Coun­ty Propo­si­tion 1 this month, NPI’s lat­est poll has found.

In the aggre­gate, 57% of vot­ers sur­veyed this week for NPI by Change Research said they had vot­ed for King Coun­ty Propo­si­tion 1 or would be doing so, while 27% said they had vot­ed no or would be doing so. 9% did not recall how they had vot­ed, 7% were not sure, and 0% said they did not vote on the measure.

Visu­al­iza­tion of NPI’s Octo­ber-Novem­ber 2022 poll find­ing on King Coun­ty Char­ter Amend­ment 1, con­cern­ing conservation

More than six in ten of those who had already cast bal­lots report­ed hav­ing backed the propo­si­tion, with few­er than a quar­ter opposed. Among vot­ers who have not yet vot­ed, the mea­sure has less sup­port: 49% indi­cat­ed they’ll be vot­ing yes and 33% indi­cat­ed they’ll be vot­ing no. 18% said they were not sure.

King Coun­ty Propo­si­tion 1 was placed on the bal­lot by the King Coun­ty Coun­cil sev­er­al months ago at the request of King Coun­ty Exec­u­tive Dow Constantine.

The Yes cam­paign explains:

Exec­u­tive Con­stan­tine launched the Land Con­ser­va­tion Ini­tia­tive in 2016, con­ven­ing a region­al part­ner­ship of com­mu­ni­ties, cities, farm­ers, busi­ness­es, and envi­ron­men­tal lead­ers to pro­tect 65,000 acres of the high­est con­ser­va­tion-val­ue open space.

The ini­tia­tive is off to a strong start, but with­out ade­quate fund­ing now, King Coun­ty and part­ners will miss the best oppor­tu­ni­ties to pro­tect open spaces. A Yes on King Coun­ty Propo­si­tion 1 [vote] restores the local Con­ser­va­tion Futures Pro­gram to its orig­i­nal rate – less than $2 more per month for the aver­age homeowner.

A large num­ber of envi­ron­men­tal and con­ser­va­tion orga­ni­za­tions are cham­pi­oning the levy’s pas­sage, along with REI and the King Coun­ty Democ­rats. Both The Stranger and The Seat­tle Times have sup­port­ed a yes vote.

Oppo­si­tion has been mut­ed. Michael Fisette and Chuck Best sup­plied a “stop the land grab” con state­ment for the voter’s pam­phlet, bizarrely argu­ing in one pas­sage: “If every­body owns the prop­er­ty, then no one per­son is incen­tivized to main­tain it, increas­ing the like­li­hood of fire, pol­lu­tion, and squatting.”

(That’s a non­sen­si­cal argu­ment: when prop­er­ty is in pri­vate hands, there are usu­al­ly few­er peo­ple with the author­i­ty to man­age and main­tain it.)

“Oppo­nents mis­state facts: King Coun­ty owns just over 3% of lands,” the Yes cam­paign said in response. “Fed­er­al­ly-owned Cas­cade forests are inac­ces­si­ble to many. Tax­es are deter­mined by home val­u­a­tion — not pub­lic land ownership.”

For­mer Inte­ri­or Sec­re­tary Sal­ly Jew­ell joined De’Sean Quinn and Dow Con­stan­tine in sign­ing the voter’s pam­phlet state­ment sup­port­ing the measure.

The Democ­rats on the King Coun­ty Coun­cil all sup­port the levy. Repub­li­cans Pete von Reich­bauer and Rea­gan Dunn are not list­ed as sup­port­ers of the measure.

King Coun­ty vot­ers clear­ly agree that the Land Con­ser­va­tion Ini­tia­tive is worth fund­ing, even though they are asked on almost an annu­al basis to approve levies for oth­er wor­thy caus­es, such as Medic One or Best Start for Kids.

Here’s the ques­tions we asked and the answers we received:

Already voted 

QUESTION: This year, King Coun­ty vot­ers are con­sid­er­ing King Coun­ty Propo­si­tion 1, a con­ser­va­tion levy. The bal­lot title is as fol­lows: The King Coun­ty Coun­cil passed Ordi­nance 19458 con­cern­ing fund­ing to pro­tect open space lands in King Coun­ty. This propo­si­tion would pro­vide fund­ing to pay, finance, or refi­nance acqui­si­tion and preser­va­tion of: urban green spaces, nat­ur­al areas, wildlife and salmon habi­tat, trails, riv­er cor­ri­dors, farm­lands and forests. It would autho­rize restora­tion of the county’s RCW 84.34.230 con­ser­va­tion futures prop­er­ty tax levy to a rate of $0.0625 per $1,000 of assessed val­u­a­tion for col­lec­tion in 2023 and use the dol­lar amount of the 2023 levy for the pur­pose of com­put­ing sub­se­quent levy lim­i­ta­tions under chap­ter 84.55 RCW. 

How did you vote on this proposition?

Respon­dents who told us that they had already vot­ed were shown this question. 

• Yes: 62%
• No: 23%
• Did not vote on this: 0%
• Don’t recall: 15%

Haven’t yet voted

QUESTION: This year, King Coun­ty vot­ers are con­sid­er­ing King Coun­ty Propo­si­tion 1, a con­ser­va­tion levy. The bal­lot title is as fol­lows: The King Coun­ty Coun­cil passed Ordi­nance 19458 con­cern­ing fund­ing to pro­tect open space lands in King Coun­ty. This propo­si­tion would pro­vide fund­ing to pay, finance, or refi­nance acqui­si­tion and preser­va­tion of: urban green spaces, nat­ur­al areas, wildlife and salmon habi­tat, trails, riv­er cor­ri­dors, farm­lands and forests. It would autho­rize restora­tion of the county’s RCW 84.34.230 con­ser­va­tion futures prop­er­ty tax levy to a rate of $0.0625 per $1,000 of assessed val­u­a­tion for col­lec­tion in 2023 and use the dol­lar amount of the 2023 levy for the pur­pose of com­put­ing sub­se­quent levy lim­i­ta­tions under chap­ter 84.55 RCW.

How are you vot­ing on this proposition?

Respon­dents who told us that they had not yet vot­ed were shown this question.

• Yes: 49%
  • Def­i­nite­ly yes: 28%
  • Prob­a­bly yes: 21%
• No: 33%
  • Prob­a­bly no: 11%
  • Def­i­nite­ly no: 22%
• Not sure: 18%

Aggregate responses

COMBINED ANSWERS (AGGREGATE), BOTH QUESTIONS:

• Yes: 57%
• No: 27%
• Did not vote on this: 0%
• Don’t recall: 9%
• Not sure: 7%

Our sur­vey of 740 like­ly 2022 King Coun­ty gen­er­al elec­tion vot­ers was in the field from Fri­day, Octo­ber 28th until today, Thurs­day, Novem­ber 3rd.

The poll was con­duct­ed entire­ly online for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute by Change Research and has a mod­eled mar­gin of error of 4.0%.

Fol­low this link if you’re inter­est­ed in a detailed primer on the survey’s method­ol­o­gy along with infor­ma­tion about who took the poll.

If you’d like more infor­ma­tion about King Coun­ty Propo­si­tion 1, the Yes cam­paign’s web­site is a great resource. You can see all of the endorse­ments and check out the news cov­er­age. If you’d like to read the text of the amend­ment and the com­plete voter’s pam­phlet state­ments, King Coun­ty Elec­tions has a page with all of that infor­ma­tion help­ful­ly com­piled in one place. Hap­py voting!