Democrats Blow Poll With Loaded Question

Eye on Boise has this news on the competing tax plans:

Idaho Democrats have conducted a statewide poll that shows 60.5 percent of Idahoans prefer their property tax relief plan, and only 10.5 percent like Gov. Jim Risch’s proposal better, with 17 percent undecided and 12 percent refusing to say. Risch dismissed the poll, saying it mischaracterized his plan.

Did it? If nothing else, the question was loaded:

“Next week, the Legislature will convene for one day to talk about property tax relief. There are two plans currently being discussed: The first plan would use the surplus and raise the sales tax to 6 percent. Forty percent of the property tax relief would go to Idaho homeowners, the other 60 percent would go to big businesses and out-of-state property owners. The second plan would use the surplus to target 100 percent of the relief to Idaho homeowners without raising the sales tax. Big businesses and out-of-state property owners would receive no benefit. If you were asked to vote, which plan would you support?”

Its loaded and not an accurate measure of public opinion, because you’re doing a lot of analysis of the plan as well as a lot of selling of the plan in the question. In essence, its a push poll. This is why you had 17% undecided and 12% not answering, because the question was pushy. A neutral question would have been:

“Next week, the Legislature will convene for one day to talk about property tax relief. There are two plans currently being discussed: The first plan would use the surplus and raise the sales tax to 6 percent and provide a tax cut to all property owners. The second plan would fund the tax cut entirely out of the surplus and would only provide relief to homeowners. If you were asked to vote, which plan would you support?”

That poll is probably not perfectly worded, but its far better than the Democrats’ poll question. How much money did they waste on a meaningless poll? 50 state strategy indeed!

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