Exit Poll
With Prop. 1 defeated, the debate is underway to define what it all means.
First up is the Sierra Club, with an exit poll that they claim shows that the roads portion was the real drag on the ballot. Erica Barnett cites pollster Tom Riehle's statement that "what was unique about this election was the decisive role of a small group of voters." Riehle and the Sierra Club's main data point is the 20% of "no" voters -- 11% of all voters -- who cited global warming as a reason for voting "no." That's theoretically enough to tip the election.
It's an interesting argument, but there's a few major caveats to keep in mind. First, in a close election, one could plausibly claim that any small group was the "decisive" one. Second, they oversampled Seattle and King County voters. Based on provisional ballot data here and here, I'm guessing an oversample of King County (esp. Seattle) by 8 points and an undersample of Snohomish by about the same. That could explain much of the global warming answer.
Still, I wouldn't call it bogus, necessarily. Groups tend to hire pollsters who will reaffirm their agenda. After all, that's why there are Democratic pollsters and Republican pollsters.
It's biased, sure, but there's still some interesting data.
First, people really didn't seem to want that Sea-Tac-to-Tacoma light rail! One could reasonably conclude that that project alone nearly sunk the whole package (if my math's right, 5% of all voters cited it as their No. 1 reason). Duly noted!
Second, among the "yes" voters, there were many more "transit only" supporters than "road only" ones. 35 vs. 11. That can't be explained away by the Seattle oversample. People. Want. Transit. And not just buses. They want rail, especially North and East, and they're willing to pay for it. That's a good thing.
I hope we see more exit polls in the near future, from different pollsters. A sample of 5,000 voters is pretty revealing, despite the flaws.
Update: Scotto in the comments offers a plausible explanation for the alleged oversample.
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The poll was definitely not biased. It was done by:
http://www.rtstrategies.com/index_files/Partners.htm.
They are the pollsters for the Cook Political Report, and have conducted polls for the Associated Press, Business Week, CBS News, NBC News, Newsweek, the Orlando Sentinel and the Wall Street Journal.
They've got their national reputation to protect, so there's no way they'd fake this.
They also did not oversample Seattle. It's hard to tell where you're thinking the oversample came from, but...
RTA District (Portions of King, Pierce & Snohomish Counties) = 381,860 ballots cast to date
http://vote.wa.gov/elections/W EI/Results_Prop1.aspx
Seattle = 94,848 ballots cast to date
http://www.metrokc.gov/electio ns/200711/resPage17.htm
That works out to be 24.84% for Seattle. The RT Strategies survey had it at 24.98%.
You can't ask for a more accurate sample than that!
About global warming vs. other factors: you should really dig into the crosstabs some more. That 11% of global warming NO's came from people who would have voted YES if roads and transit had not been tied together. That's quite a different thing from, say, the 30 or 40% of cheapskates who will always vote against any tax -- they would never have voted for Prop 1. But the global warming NO's were near-certain losses.
Anyway, I'm glad you're receptive to the message that this poll is good news for transit.
Hi Scotto,
I was using the RTID numbers, which come out to 409,883. 381,860 is the RTA number. The districts are slightly different, so that's where the difference comes from. Do you know which district the pollsters used?
Based on those numbers, I get a breakdown of 57%/21%/22% for King/Pierce/Snohomish, the RT poll has 64%/21%/15% (when you combine Seattle and the balance of King).
Also, I'd never accuse them of "faking" anything. They're certainly a reputable firm. I was just suggesting that there are ways to tweak poll questions that can influence the numbers you get. Pollsters like to please their clients. James Carville's firm, for example, only polls for Democrats and tends to come up with poll results that Democrats like, that's all. But point taken, "bias" may have been too strong a word.
And yeah, I definitely think this poll confirms that people want transit. I'm still skeptical that this specific $10B Sound Transit package would have passed on its own, though. It's still, what, 3-5 times the size of the 1996 ST measure? And you've already got 60% or so people saying that they don't feel like they got their money's worth from Sound Move according to that King 5 poll.
I hope we'll find out soon enough! Thanks for the comment.
Frank,
They used the RTA district.
I was also skeptical that voters would pass such a huge transit-only package, but then then I saw those poll numbers and thought about it some more: People are simultaneously starting to believe that global warming is a real problem we need to do something about quickly (lots of corroborating polls on this) and, at the same time, they are also beginning to understand that you can't build your way out of congestion (personal observation, not quite so reliable). I think those two factors made a ton of transit spending more palatable.
Still, I want to vote YES on transit ASAP, and a streamlined transit-only plan is the most likely thing to come out in 2008 or 2009: I'll take it. Actually, there were a few good road projects in RTID as well: I'd take those too.
The main thing for me is that whatever plan shows up on the ballot has got to put us on a path towards climate sanity.
Our leaders could have made greenhouse gas reduction a key selling point of Prop 1, but instead, they allowed staff in the State gov't to use a bureaucratic maneuver to pull GHG analysis requirements out of the legislation. I'm fairly sure they feared how badly Prop 1 would have failed on that measure.
So, by the time of the next vote, I'll be hoping to see a plan that will drop transportation GHG's down to 80% of 1990 levels (what scientists say we need to avoid the worst effects of global warming). We don't have to buy the whole thing at once, but transportation Plan B has to make the fast GHG cuts we need in the next decade, and be on a trajectory that is likely to reach the end goal in another 40 years.
I've got my fingers crossed.