Over the last few weeks, five different polling organizations have come out with snapshots of how the California electorate is leaning on Proposition 6, the constitutional amendment that would repeal last year’s fuel tax and vehicle fee increases and require voter approval of any such hikes in the future.
A day before the election, the only thing the results tell you with absolute certainty is that the way you ask a question matters. A lot.
Two of the polls — one from UC Berkeley’s Institute for Government Studies and one from Stanford — showed likely voters rejecting the repeal effort 13 to 16 percentage points.
A survey from the Public Policy Institute of California suggests Prop. 6 will fail in a fairly close vote — with the “no” side 7 points ahead. A fourth, from USC, indicates the race is a dead heat.
That leaves one other poll trying to divine the fate of the gas-tax repeal, from New Jersey-based SurveyUSA. That firm’s sample of likely voters, taken about the same time as all the others, suggested that voters supported the repeal by a blowout margin of 58 percent “yes” to 29 percent “no.”
There was an obvious explanation for the difference: The first four polls asked respondents about the language they’re seeing on Tuesday’s ballot, including the proposition’s official title and summary.
PPIC, for instance, posed this question over the phone:
“Proposition 6 is called the ‘Eliminates Certain Road Repair and Transportation Funding. Requires Certain Fuel Taxes and Vehicle Fees be Approved by the Electorate. Initiative Constitutional Amendment.’ It repeals a 2017 transportation lawâs taxes and fees designated for road repairs and public transportation. The fiscal impact is reduced ongoing revenues of $5.1 billion from state fuel and vehicle taxes that mainly would have paid for highway and road maintenance and repairs, as well as transit programs. If the election were held today, would you vote yes or no on Proposition 6?â
The Berkeley IGS, Stanford and USC polls, all conducted online, used virtually the same wording. Among those four surveys, support for Proposition 6 ranged from 34 percent to 41 percent.
SurveyUSA, however, posed the issue this way to its online respondents:
“Proposition 6, a constitutional amendment which would repeal gasoline and diesel taxes, and vehicle fees, that were enacted in 2017 and would require any future fuel taxes be approved by voters. A YES vote on Prop 6 would repeal fuel tax increases that were enacted in 2017, including the Road Repaid and Accountability Act of 2017. A NO vote on Prop 6 would keep the fuel taxes imposed in 2017 by the California Legislature in place, and would allow the Legislature to impose whatever fees and taxes it approved in the future, provided two-thirds of the California House (sic) and two-thirds of the California Senate approved. On Proposition 6, how do you vote?”
Given the question’s emphasis on the repeal terminology and its argumentative suggestion that a “no” vote will leave the Legislature free to levy further taxes, it’s not shocking that SurveyUSA found rabid support for Prop. 6.
But among those who took note of how sharply the SurveyUSA numbers diverged from those of other pollsters was SurveyUSA itself.
CEO Jay Leve said Monday the disparity prompted the company to perform what amounted to a do-over last week.
The company conducted a poll last Thursday and Friday in which a group of 913 voters who said they had already returned their mail-in ballots or were about to was split roughly in half. One group was asked SurveyUSA’s original question; the other was asked to respond to the PPIC wording.
The outcome?
When asked the PPIC question — the one reflecting the actual language on the ballot — SurveyUSA’s respondents were 44-41 in favor of Prop. 6, with 14 percent undecided. But given the poll’s unusually large margin of error — 7.2 percentage points — its result is a statistical dead heat.
Separately, 52 percent of the group asked the original SurveyUSA question — the one emphasizing the repeal — said they supported Prop. 6, with 40 percent saying they opposed the measure.
“Pollsters live by the sword, they die by the sword,” Leve said. “We’re prepared to take our lumps if this measure is defeated soundly. Should it eke through, we’ll be happy to take our victory lap and say, ‘OK, we’re glad we did our research.'”
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