Public Policy Polling

Previewing next week's tracking poll

We'll be running our monthly North Carolina primary tracking poll next week with a few new twists:

-We'll be testing the Republican gubernatorial candidate field both with and without Charlotte mayor Pat McCrory. It'll be interesting to see how much support is out there for him, and which of the three current contenders would be most affected by his entering the race.

-We'll be adding former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee to the Republican presidential question.

-We'll be adding the Republican Lieutenant Governor primary to the poll, pitting state senator Robert Pittenger and former congressional candidate Greg Dority.

Stay tuned for those results next week!

Civitas Poll: the federal stuff

Here are the highlights of this month's Civitas Poll:

-They included Mike Huckabee in the question on the Republican presidential race and he finished tied for second. That's good enough for us. He'll be in the next PPP tracking poll. Rudy Giuliani continues to lead while Fred Thompson's free fall continues. He went from 25% in September to 19% in October and now 12% this month.

-On the Democratic side all three of the main contenders saw their support drop from the October poll, while the number of folks unsure saw a significant increase. The opposite trend is supposed to occur as the election gets closer so I'm not sure what's happening there. Hillary Clinton maintains a solid lead.

-They asked some match up questions for the presidential race in North Carolina. Giuliani leads Clinton 45-41, Mitt Romney leads Clinton 43-42, and Clinton leads Thompson 43-42. What's interesting about that is they asked respondents which of the Democratic contenders was most electable. Nearly half said Clinton- but when asked the head to head question she didn't fare all that well. I wonder if Barack Obama or John Edwards would have done better, which would have shown that while respondents think Clinton is more electable in general she is not more electable to them.

-US Senate matchups showed Elizabeth Dole with a 46-29 lead over Kay Hagan and a 47-27 lead over Jim Neal.

Civitas Poll: the state stuff

More highlights from this month's Civitas Poll:

-In the Democratic gubernatorial primary Bev Perdue leads Richard Moore 31-25. Proportion wise that's about where we've been- Civitas has more undecided respondents because they poll general election voters.

-In the Republican primary, Bill Graham leads with 19% followed by Fred Smith with 14% and Bob Orr with 11%. They hadn't polled the Republicans since September when there was basically a three way tie. Our poll this month showed Smith vaulting Graham after Graham had led the rest of the year. It'll be interesting to see what we get next week.

-Civitas also enters the Lieutenant Governor fray, presumably in response to Republican senator Robert Pittenger's recent moves toward entering the race. They matched Pittenger up with fellow senator Walter Dalton, assuming I guess he would emerge from the Democratic pack. Dalton led 19-17. They also did favorable/unfavorable ratings for the two. Dalton is 4% favorable, 2% unfavorable while Pittenger is 4% favorable, 3% unfavorable. Not much to take from that.

A radical idea

UPDATE: It took Perdue about an hour to attack right back. Sigh.

Last night Bev Perdue made a proposal for budget reform. Today Richard Moore met with reporters to attack her for it. That's been pretty much par for the course any time either of them has put a policy idea forward.

Here is my dream. We have two very capable Democrats running for Governor who have both done a great job serving the state of North Carolina. Either would be a fine executive. Maybe, just maybe, sometime during this campaign one of them could announce a policy initiative and when the other was asked to comment they could say it sounded like a fine idea and they didn't have a bad thing to say about it.

Candidates can draw contrasts between themselves and their opponents without attacking every proposal they make and every little thing about them.

My vote will probably go to the candidate whose campaign best seems to end up grasping that message.

New Poll Shows Support for Transfer Tax in Wake County

Topline results are below. Full results, including crosstabs, can be found here.

Q1 Would you prefer that the costs of growth be
paid primarily by those building and buying new
homes and buildings in Wake County, or paid
for mostly by existing tax payers? If you would
like the costs of growth to be paid for primarily
by those building and buying new homes and
buildings in Wake County, press 1. If you
would like the costs of growth to be paid for
mostly by existing tax payers, press 2. If you
don’t know, press 3.
Primarily by those
building and buying
new homes and
buildings in Wake
County ....................78%
Mostly by existing
tax payers ............... 14%
Don't know.............. 8%

Q2 In order to pay for the costs of growth, would
you support or oppose a tax of less than a half
percent paid when a house or property is sold,
called a transfer tax? If you would support a
transfer tax, press 1. If opposed, press 2. If
you don’t know, press 3.
Support ................. 49%
Oppose ................. 40%
Don't know ............ 11%

A little heat in the Lieutenant Governor's race

Earlier this month I wrote about how nothing was going on in the Lieutenant Governor's race.

But now something has.

I think Hampton Dellinger's going after Walter Dalton this week was a stroke of genius for three reasons:

1) It separated Dellinger from the pack he's often been lumped in with candidates Dan Besse and Pat Smathers. There seems to be a segment of Democratic leaders in the state that supports Dalton. There seems to be another segment that is anti-Dalton but likes Dellinger, Smathers, and Besse and doesn't know who to support of the three. By criticizing Dalton's voting record and using it as an opportunity to push his own progressive views, Dellinger has moved himself out of the pack a little bit.

If this race gets to a runoff I think Walter Dalton loses- he needs to sneak by with 41% of the vote in the primary. And it will probably take one of the other three candidates becoming a 'co-front runner' with Dalton to force that runoff. Dellinger was already primed for that spot because of his fundraising prowess, but his move this week does more to get him in the public eye on that front.

2) Dellinger stuck to the issues. I have been very critical of Bev Perdue and Richard Moore for the pettiness that pervades their race. But Dellinger didn't talk about minute details of Dalton's educational background or get an out of state family member to file a public records request. He went straight at specific items in Dalton's voting record. I think that's perfectly fair game.

3) He put Dalton on the defensive and Dalton's response was weak. He sent out an e-mail spouting platitudes about his record; where Dellinger offered specific critiques Dalton gave vague responses. He also claimed Dellinger's attack was the 'worst aspect of the campaign season.' I don't think anyone really buys that criticizing an opponent's public voting record is one of the lower things that occurs in a political campaign.

We're doing our tracking poll next week- it will be interesting to see if this incident causes any movement in the numbers. I doubt it will, but there's little doubt that Dellinger's move this week has caught attention with opinion leaders. Besse and Smathers will need to do something of this magnitude to bring the same level of attention to their campaigns and Dalton's going to need to find a better way of responding to attacks.

It'll be interesting.

Our new transfer tax poll

According to our latest survey released today, likely voters in Wake County support a transfer tax on property sales by a margin of 49-40%. When presented with other options of paying for growth such as sales tax and property tax increases, more than half of the respondents favored a transfer tax. Below are excerpted results. Click here for the press release and complete results.

In order to pay for the costs of growth, would you support or oppose a tax of less than a half percent paid when a house or property is sold, called a transfer tax?

Support 49%
Oppose 40%
Don't know 11%

Another way to pay for the cost of growth is to raise property taxes every year. Would you prefer to pay for these new roads and schools by increasing property taxes or by a transfer tax on property sales?

Prefer Transfer Tax 59%
Prefer Property Tax Increase 20%
Don't know 22%

Another way being proposed to pay for growth is a quarter percent increase in the sales tax. Would you support an increase in the sales tax?

Support 34%
Oppose 59%
Don't know 7%

We can pay the cost of growth by a small transfer tax paid when real property is sold or by a small increase in our sales tax. Which do you prefer?

Prefer Transfer Tax 54%
Prefer Sales Tax Increase 31%
Don't know 15%

If you knew that opposition to the transfer tax was being almost exclusively funded by the realtor and developer lobby, would you be more or less likely to support a transfer tax?

More likely to support 45%
Less likely to support 25%
Don't know 29%

What the Transfer Tax poll results mean

Post by Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy Polling:

Earlier this month transfer tax referendums were defeated in 16 counties across North Carolina. Some on the right and in the development community have declared that result to be the death of the concept of having those responsible for the rapid growth in many counties across the state pay for their fair share of it. I thought the failure of the referendums was more the result of mismanaged campaigns and a lack of a coherent and compelling message. A recent poll my firm Public Policy Polling conducted of likely Wake County voters shows that the transfer tax is a popular concept, if people have a proper understanding of the alternatives.

The most important message to convey to the voters is that there are costs associated with growth and that they will have to be paid through some form of taxation. Foes of transfer tax measures this fall created the impression that not paying was an option. It isn’t, and the counties with referendums this fall failed to get that message across to their citizens.

In order to leap that hurdle we prefaced our poll with the statement that ‘Wake County is growing rapidly and must increase its revenue to pay for new schools, parks, roads, water and sewer.’ Given that background and before being asked about alternative ways of paying for growth, poll respondents supported a transfer tax by a margin of 49-40%.

Support for the transfer tax increased when folks were given the choice of a transfer tax or another form of taxation. For instance when pitted against the specter of property tax increases, a transfer tax was preferred by a spread of 59-20% among survey respondents. If counties effectively communicate that a transfer tax will help relieve the burden of property tax increases, their voters are much more likely to support a referendum.

Counties have also been given the option of increasing the sales tax to generate new revenue. That is not a popular concept in Wake County. Only 34% of those polled supported a quarter percent increase in the sales tax to pay for growth, and when the options of a sales tax increase or a transfer tax were pitted against each other, the transfer tax was preferred by a margin of 54-31%.

Recently several Council members in Raleigh and Cary were defeated by responsible growth opponents after their ties to the realtor and developer community were made widely known to the public. The pro-growth lobby is not politically popular and our poll shows that if voters are aware that they are the ones largely funding the opposition to the transfer tax it becomes a more popular issue.

45% of respondents said knowing that the anti-transfer tax campaigns are largely funded by the realtor and developer lobby made them more likely to support the transfer tax, while 29% said they didn’t know if it would impact their vote. Only 25% said that knowledge would make them less inclined to support it. Just as getting the word out about who was behind the campaigns of Jessie Taliaferro, Tommy Craven, and Ernie McAllister helped the campaigns of Rodger Koopman, Nancy McFarlane, and Harold Weinbrecht, making sure voters are informed that it is growth interests fueling the opposition to the transfer tax will earn it greater popularity.

What’s the bottom line? The transfer tax was doomed only by ineffective campaigning and message delivery. Since public money rightfully can’t be spent by counties to support their transfer tax campaigns, committees of prominent community leaders and citizens need to be formed to raise money and build support for the referendums.

Most importantly, they need to thoroughly educate voters on what the options are to pay for the costs of growth while making it crystal clear that not paying is not an option. Only if voters thoroughly understand that the failure to pass a transfer tax will mean higher property tax increases for years to come, will it succeed.

The 16 defeats represent a failure in leadership by our elected officials and the progressive community. Let’s hope we learn from it.

To include or not to include...

Every four years there seems to be a controversy over who does and does not get invited to participate in the presidential debates. The general rule of thumb seems to end up being that folks get to participate if they're running at over 5% in the polls.

But how do you decide who gets to be in the polls? That's question I'm wrestling with this week.

Since we did our last statewide tracking poll there have been new entrants to the Governor's race on both the Democratic and Republican sides. The new Republican is Elbie Powers, a Sampson County pecan farmer. Mr. Powers ran for Agriculture Commissioner in 2000 and finished last in a six candidate Republican primary. The new Democrat is Dennis Nielsen. He lost to A.B. Swindell running as a Republican for the state senate in 2004. The front page of his campaign site features an essay titled 'Hookers and Pimps may be more trusted that (sic) some candidates.'

It's hard to take either of these guys very seriously. But we included another fringe candidate, Democrat John Ross Hendrix in our Senate poll earlier this month. He was the choice of 8% of the respondents. By means of comparison John McCain had 8% and Bob Orr had 7% in our presidential and gubernatorial polls, and we wouldn't consider dropping them from our polls.

We're doing our poll next week and I really don't know whether to add Powers and Nielsen or not. If you have an opinion leave a comment or feel free to send me an email.

Bob Orr and the Democrats

Over at the Dome blog, Ryan comments that several Democrats have said Bob Orr is the more reasonable of the Republican contenders for Governor. Beyond Wayne Goodwin and Jim Protzman who he cites, I've heard this from a lot of other people as well.

As far as I know there have not been any public head to head polls on potential general election match ups in the Governor's race. That makes it hard to know if the respect of Orr crossing party lines is a broad trend or just an anomaly among some of the state's opinion leaders. And as Goodwin and Protzman have said even if Orr got the Republican nomination they'd vote for the Democratic candidate.

One thing that the recent SurveyUSA poll can tell us is that Orr won't get far on the support of self identified moderate and liberal Republicans in the primary. Although he polled slightly better with those groups than he did among conservative Republicans, conservatives made a up a whooping 64% of the sample. It will likely be the candidate who can best appeal to that demographic who will come up with the GOP nomination.

The respect Orr gets across party lines shows that many people think he's a good guy. But it probably won't do much to move him closer to the Governor's mansion.