A long­shot right wing ini­tia­tive that seeks to sab­o­tage Wash­ing­ton’s gun safe­ty laws is opposed by a plu­ral­i­ty of like­ly 2024 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers despite hav­ing received a favor­able bal­lot title and looks like a bad bet for the gun lob­by, the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute’s most recent statewide poll has found.

46% of 773 respon­dents inter­viewed last week by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute said they would “prob­a­bly” or “def­i­nite­ly” vote no on Lar­ry Jensen’s Ini­tia­tive 2078, which Jensen is try­ing to qual­i­fy to the 2024 Wash­ing­ton State Leg­is­la­ture with the back­ing of Tim Eyman and Glen Morgan.

41% said they would “prob­a­bly” or “def­i­nite­ly” vote yes. 13% were not sure.

Visu­al­iza­tion of NPI’s June 2023 Ini­tia­tive 2078 poll find­ing (NPI graphic)

Ini­tia­tive 2078, filed in April, is a grass­roots effort to cre­ate a giant loop­hole in the gun safe­ty laws passed by the peo­ple and the Leg­is­la­ture for the last ten years. As sum­ma­rized by the Attor­ney Gen­er­al’s office, it would “pro­hib­it the gov­ern­ment from restrict­ing the pur­chase or pos­ses­sion of guns or oth­er arms for self-defense by law-abid­ing cit­i­zens (as defined) unless a uni­form fed­er­al stan­dard is required, and would pro­hib­it gov­ern­ment reg­istries of such law-abid­ing cit­i­zens. It would pro­hib­it con­fis­ca­tion of arms from law-abid­ing cit­i­zens with­out due process.”

Our I‑2078 ques­tion took the form of a bal­lot title test, in which respon­dents were asked to react to the bal­lot title and noth­ing else. No argu­ments from pro­po­nents or oppo­nents and no “mes­sag­ing” of any kind — just the words the Attor­ney Gen­er­al’s office came up with for the mea­sure’s con­cise descrip­tion, which is what vot­ers would see on their bal­lots if the mea­sure were to qualify.

You’ll see the con­cise descrip­tion in a moment. It dif­fers from the sum­ma­ry in the pre­ced­ing para­graph, though it is sim­i­lar and has sev­er­al of the same words.

Well-run cam­paigns test their bal­lot titles in advance of begin­ning any sig­na­ture gath­er­ing, because a con­cise descrip­tion that does­n’t poll well sig­ni­fies the ini­tia­tive would most like­ly fail if it were to be con­sid­ered by the elec­torate. A com­pelling bal­lot title starts in the six­ties; many strate­gists con­sid­er it exceed­ing­ly impor­tant that there be a buffer against gains made by a poten­tial no campaign.

I‑2078 is an exam­ple of an ini­tia­tive that amaz­ing­ly does­n’t even start above the mid-for­ties. Despite all of the mum­bo-jum­bo in the title about “law abid­ing cit­i­zens,” the sup­port is weak, hard­ly exceed­ing the per­cent­age of peo­ple who say they’re will­ing to vote for ultra MAGA Repub­li­can Ron DeSan­tis next Novem­ber.

These are absolute­ly dread­ful num­bers for a pro­posed statewide ini­tia­tive at its incep­tion. A mea­sure that starts out so far behind like this is con­sid­ered by most strate­gists on both sides of the ide­o­log­i­cal fence to have no chance of passage.

See for your­self — here’s the exact text of our ques­tion and the responses:

QUESTION: An ini­tia­tive has recent­ly been filed that con­cerns guns and oth­er arms. The offi­cial descrip­tion is as fol­lows: This mea­sure would pro­hib­it gov­ern­ment restric­tions on pur­chase or pos­ses­sion of arms for self-defense by law-abid­ing cit­i­zens absent fed­er­al stan­dards, con­fis­ca­tions from law-abid­ing cit­i­zens with­out due process, and gov­ern­ment reg­istries of such cit­i­zens. If this mea­sure were to appear on the bal­lot, would you vote def­i­nite­ly vote yes, prob­a­bly vote yes, prob­a­bly vote no, or def­i­nite­ly vote no?

ANSWERS:

• Would vote yes: 41% 
  • Would def­i­nite­ly vote yes: 28%
  • Would prob­a­bly vote yes: 13%
• Would vote no: 46% 
  • Would prob­a­bly vote no: 11%
  • Would def­i­nite­ly vote no: 35%
• Not sure: 13%

If you’re a right winger and think this polling isn’t cred­i­ble because it was com­mis­sioned by a pro­gres­sive orga­ni­za­tion, think again.

Resist the temp­ta­tion to offer a knee jerk reac­tion. Read the ques­tion that was asked, care­ful­ly. Notice that it’s just the bal­lot title. Noth­ing more and noth­ing less. There were no ques­tions asked about guns before this ques­tion in an effort to influ­ence the respons­es, and our poll­ster worked hard, as they always do, to achieve a rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­ple of the Wash­ing­ton State electorate.

This is what pub­lic opin­ion research done accord­ing to the sci­en­tif­ic method looks like. I often write in this space that sub­jec­tive orga­ni­za­tions are per­fect­ly capa­ble of con­duct­ing objec­tive research, and at NPI, we do just that.

Our team is gen­uine­ly curi­ous how peo­ple feel about the issues of our time. That’s why we avoid ask­ing loaded ques­tions in our sur­veys. We know that you can’t find out what peo­ple think if you tell them what to think first.

In the last decade, Wash­ing­ton has become a state with a very strong gun safe­ty cul­ture, which helps explain why I‑2078 polls so bad­ly despite hav­ing a bal­lot title that a gun enthu­si­ast might think would be appeal­ing to a mass audience.

Sup­port for poli­cies like uni­ver­sal back­ground checks, extreme risk pro­tec­tion orders, and bans on assault weapons and high capac­i­ty mag­a­zines are rock sol­id in Wash­ing­ton, and have been increas­ing as time goes on. This sup­port spans the ide­o­log­i­cal spec­trum — it’s not just Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers who want to live in com­mu­ni­ties that are free from the scourge of gun violence.

Nation­al­ly, we’re see­ing sim­i­lar trends in pub­lic opin­ion, as dis­cussed in a very good piece that ran a few days ago in Politi­co by Lau­ren Leader titled When It Comes to Guns, Repub­li­can Women Don’t Always Agree with Repub­li­can Men.

Here’s an excerpt:

We found that Repub­li­can women not only sup­port cer­tain kinds of gun restric­tions more than Repub­li­can men do, they also most­ly agree with Demo­c­ra­t­ic and inde­pen­dent women on what those solu­tions should be. Specif­i­cal­ly, there is a whop­ping 20-point gap between Repub­li­can men (41 per­cent) and women (61 per­cent) on the ques­tion of restrict­ing the abil­i­ty to pur­chase cer­tain types of firearms.

The divide was notable in a num­ber of oth­er areas as well. On the ques­tion of restrict­ing the abil­i­ty of some­one under age 21 from hav­ing a gun, 70 per­cent of Repub­li­can women agreed, com­pared to just 63 per­cent of Repub­li­can men. On the ques­tion of imple­ment­ing laws that would make it eas­i­er for law enforce­ment to take firearms away from indi­vid­u­als who might be a threat to them­selves or oth­ers, 72 per­cent of Repub­li­can women agreed, com­pared to just 62 per­cent of Repub­li­can men.

These dynam­ics were like­wise present in the respons­es to our I‑2078 question.

A quar­ter of Repub­li­can vot­ers expressed oppo­si­tion to I‑2078, with 22% say­ing they would def­i­nite­ly vote no and anoth­er 2% say­ing they would prob­a­bly vote no. That is a sig­nif­i­cant chunk of the Repub­li­can elec­torate! This mea­sure is geared first and fore­most towards right wing vot­ers, yet we can see that not all Repub­li­cans want to roll back the progress we’ve made in our state on gun safety.

What will most like­ly hap­pen with I‑2078 is that Jensen will get a bunch of Repub­li­can PCOs and Trump vot­ers to sign his peti­tions, but he’ll arrive at the Decem­ber 31st sig­na­ture dead­line well short of 425,000 sig­na­tures, which is what he’d need to qual­i­fy the mea­sure. It’s extreme­ly tough for an exclu­sive­ly vol­un­teer-run sig­na­ture dri­ve to get so many sig­na­tures. Paid peti­tion­ers are a neces­si­ty for a statewide ini­tia­tive, and to hire them, Jensen would need a lot of mon­ey. Giv­en how poor­ly the I‑2078 bal­lot title polls, it’s unlike­ly that any wealthy donor would want to waste their mon­ey help­ing fund a sig­na­ture drive.

Hope­ful­ly, at the end of this year, we’ll be able to raise a toast to I‑2078’s demise.