I found hope in of all places the Policy Watch Blog. Many pundits have been sounding the death knell of the conservative movement for years. One of the core issues for Conservatives is that government already taxes too much and they should use the "revenue" they have more efficiently before they come back to taxpayer for "revenue enhancements. NC Policy watch and their latest "poll" done by Public Policy Polling jumped out as offering hope for the future. Three questions in particular show that minorities and young people are not as friendly to higher taxes and big government as our friends on the left would lead you to believe.
Question two asks about funding SCHIP using higher cigarette taxes and it was 50% support and 50% opposed or had no opinion. The cross tabs show that self identified minorities are either more hostile or ambivalent to this higher tax than whites. In addition the younger the person the more unfair they view this higher tax – definite hope for the future!
Question six asks about sources of new funding for highway construction. Only 43% go with one of the many suggestions to raise taxes and 54% select an option that precludes a tax increase. 3% have no opinion on this question so I naturally put them in the group that does not want to raise taxes. With the wording of most of these questions the default answer is to raise taxes.
Question seven is about transportation funding and asks about raising "…significant transportation funding by placing an additional sales tax on large, gas guzzling vehicles". A clear plurality (47%) opposes raising taxes and a big majority either opposes or don’t have an opinion (65%). Only 38% support raising taxes.
On questions six and seven self identified minorities and younger respondents oppose higher taxes in higher percentages than whites and older respondents. Men and self identified Republicans also register higher numbers in opposition to taxes. But the hopeful sign in this poll is minorities and younger respondents show they understand higher taxes are not necessarily the answer to every problem and in the end they will pay higher prices and still not get what they were promised.
Policy Watch could have saved some money by reading this report by the Civitas staff that details why the hostility to higher taxes by young people and minorities!
The rest of the questions in this short "poll" elicited the responses that the drafters of the poll seemed to want. I think these three questions did not turn out as they hoped, especially if you dig into the cross tabs.
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