In addition to today’s Washington Poll numbers, internal tracking polls show that the “no” vote on Initiative 1033, the Tim Eyman-backed measure that would cap state spending, putting state and local governments in a permanent recession, is now above 50 percent, including voters who are still undecided.
That’s great news for 1033 opponents, who were (justifiably) worried by early polls showing the tax-slashing measure leading 45 to 32 percent.
If 1033 fails, it will be the first Eyman tax initiative to tank (previous Eyman failures all relate to transportation), and the first Eyman initiative ever to fail in an off-year election, when conservative voter turnout is high and overall voter turnout is low.
Tweet
No one’s won the election yet and polls only show what might be possible. The people opposed to I-1033 can’t let up but need to be sure that people actually vote. The actual number of ballots cast so far is fairly low.
And if people think everything is alreay decided, they tend not to vote. It’s only the ballots that are mailed in by election day that count.
And for everyone that’s tired of Eyman initiatives the best way to slow him down is to beat I-1033 decisively with a big no vote.
So mail those ballots in and get your friends and family to do it also. Don’t get complacent.
On next year’s ballot:
Initiative XXXX – To Prohibit Tim Eyman From Putting Forward Any Additional Initiatives
@2 If we could just get away with this legally…
2. The Initiative process needs to be fixed in general. It’s a little too easy to get bad measures onto the ballot, to say the least.
I volunteer to pay his moving expenses to Texas – they’d love him there. Texas Tim could find himself some GOP oilmen to act as his new sugar daddies so he still wouldn’t have to work, and he’d have a totally untouched supply of petition gatherers he could pay to obfuscate potential signers. He’d fit in perfectly down there as a self-serving, shortsighted, media whore.
I wonder how many individuals who don’t like the initiative appealed their real estate taxes?
I-695, the slot machine/property tax initiative run by Eyeman lost big time. The tribes buried it with a $10M advertising campaign.
I-695 created the play book to defeat Eyman…raise more than $3M and bury him on the airwaves. His initiatives pass on ballot title alone, no advertising or campaign. The only way to beat him is get on the airwaves and pound his initiative. He doesn’t have the money to respond.
Tracking polls will not reflect the King County can’t-find-it-on-the-ballot effect, will they?
And what precisely does this post mean by the phrase “including voters who are still undecided”?
@8: Great point, RonK. I think the margin is big enough to make up for the hidden-measure effect, but I admit I hadn’t considered that.
Kind of surprising that Tim Eyman hasn’t responded by copying and pasting a press release in the comments.
@ 7:
I-695 passed, to my disgust, and Gutless Gary Locke, our worst governor since the execrable Dixy Lee Ray, rushed to have the Legislature pass it after the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional. The measure to which you refer is I-892.