Not a big surprise, but that doesn’t mean one is right and the other is wrong.
Just days apart, two polls related to Houston ISD’s proposed $4.4 billion school bond forecast clashing results, with a new survey released Tuesday suggesting voters might reject the record-breaking package.
The latest survey, released Tuesday by the Texas American Federation of Teachers, shows just over half of 736 likely voters surveyed said they would vote against the proposal for billions in campus, technology and security upgrades. About 30 percent of likely voters surveyed said they would support the bond, while nearly 20 percent said they were undecided or would not vote on the proposal.
Leaders of the Houston Federation of Teachers, a local affiliate of the Texas AFT union, have vocally opposed the bond, though the poll was conducted by Z to A Research, a public opinion research company catered to Democratic campaigns and causes.
The results arrive five days after Rice University’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research released a poll showing nearly three-quarters of about 1,900 HISD residents would back a school bond package that does not raise property tax rates. That survey did not ask respondents whether they would support HISD’s exact proposal, which had not been finalized at the time of the poll. The district’s $4.4 billion plan does not include a property tax rate increase.
[…]
The wide gap between the two polls’ findings may stem from some key differences in the structure of the surveys, including question wording, sample size and methodology.
The Texas AFT poll asked directly about HISD’s current bond proposal, while the Rice survey asked more broadly about support for a school bond that does not raise property taxes.
“Question wording is everything,” Z to A Research Founder Nancy Zdunkewicz said. “People behave differently when they have the actual ballot language in front of them.”
Additionally, the Rice poll questioned more than double the number of residents compared to the Texas AFT poll. Rice targeted all adult residents of HISD, while the Texas AFT surveyed likely voters, a group that skews slightly older and whiter than the full district population.
See here for the background. While this poll is closer to my own belief of where this issue stands, it’s still approaching the question in a curious way. Here’s the poll memo, which asks the first question as follows:
“Do you support or oppose a property tax increase in Houston Independent School District to fund $4.4 billion in bonds to update and repair HISD buildings and for new technology?”
There are three problems with this. One, HISD promises that the bond won’t necessitate a tax increase. You can believe them on that or not, but if the driver of opposition to the bond is the possibility of higher taxes and that point is in dispute, that casts doubt on the question’s premise. Two, we all know that the people leading the opposition to this bond aren’t making any tax increase arguments about it. They’re arguing that Mike Miles can’t be trusted – “no trust, no bond” – and that we should wait until he’s gone to pass a bond. Go read this story about Rep. Sylvia Garcia’s town hall about the bond referendum – this is what Ruth Kravetz was saying, and the issue of property taxes wasn’t a main point. People will make arguments they’re less fond of to win an election, but there’s no way this won’t be fought about Mike Miles and the takeover.
And three, for all the quibbles that I had with that Kinder poll, the main point they made is that people will still support the bond if the tax increase is modest. Support drops off pretty quickly once the amount of the increase gets beyond nominal levels, but the point here is that the “tax increase” issue is not binary. How much of an increase matters. You can certainly argue that HISD is not being honest about the need to raise taxes, but it’s a lot harder to say by how much. Also, too, even in that Z to A poll, more Democrats still said they’d support the bond than oppose it even with a tax increase. This is why this election won’t be fought on the “tax increase” turf – that’s not the main issue for the biggest bloc of voters, who under normal circumstances would greatly support the bond. The reasons people aren’t supporting this one are unique to our current situation. That’s what the opponents really want to talk about, but it’s not what is reflected in this question.
The next question listed in the poll memo is a straightforward presentation of the referendum language, which is what I want to see in a poll, but only “after hearing the arguments from supporters and opponents of the bond”. They do not present any data about what happened when they asked that question before presenting the arguments for and against, which either means they didn’t ask – which would be a very strange omission, as surely you want some idea of how effective those arguments are – or they just don’t tell us what the numbers are, which suggests to me that they look pretty good for the bond up front. That’s surely not what the opponents want to lead with.
Look, I can believe that most voters can be persuaded to vote against the bond. The opponents have a lot of material to work with. But when you put forward this kind of question and tout its results, you assume that 1) the voters will actually hear your anti-bond arguments, which is a tough assumption in a Presidential election year, let alone this one; and 2) you’re making the actual arguments the other side will make on their behalf. You can’t assume that – they may do a better job of advocating for themselves than you will, or maybe they’ll be less forthright about their position, or maybe they’ll find a distraction to focus on and fight on turf you weren’t expecting. You’re making a lot of assumptions, and you haven’t even told us what those supporter and opponent arguments were. I’m sorry, but I have my doubts about your numbers.
Again, I think this election is nowhere near as favorable to the bond as the Kinder poll suggested. I think the past record of bonds plus the clear level of opposition to this one strongly implies that this will be a tough sell for HISD, though not an impossible one. All I’m asking for is a poll that asks the appropriate questions for the issue at hand. Surely someone can produce that for me. The Chron has more.
For the first time in my life, I am seriously considering voting against the bond proposals (there are 2). Until Texans can quit complaining and elect representatives who will enact legislation that benefits their constituents, I have no sympathy.
Pingback: Texas blog roundup for the week of September 2 | Off the Kuff
Pingback: Judge Hidalgo advocates for the Flood Control tax hike | Off the Kuff