Tuesday, November 3, 2009
City Who Is Still Undecided?
Posted by Dominic Holden on Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 8:49 AM
Detailed cross tabs of a poll released yesterday by SurveyUSA show Joe Mallahan has a two-point lead, but 12 percent of voters remain undecided. How are they likely to vote?
If late-October trends are an indiction, Mike McGinn could do well: He picked up seven percent support since a poll conducted 10 days before—when 21 percent of voters were undecided—but Mallahan only picked up two percent. If McGinn continues to get three-quarters of undecided voters, he could win.
Younger voters will probably steer heavily towards McGinn. The largest age demographic of undecided voters are 18 to 34 years old—who make up a quarter of all likely voters and a group considered McGinn's base—and still 19 percent of these younger voters haven't made up their minds. Voters of the same age who have made up their minds support McGinn by a 49 percent to 33 percent margin. That's a 26 percent lead. Looking at a larger chunk of the electorate, again by age, voters under 50 years old who have decided support McGinn by a five-point margin. Overall this group makes up 57 percent of all likely Seattle voters and they are 14 percent undecided (compared to 10 percent of voters over 50), so the largest age demographics prefer McGinn and they are also the majority of undecided voters.
But Mallahan may have the upper hand—that is, if younger voters are fairly represented, which they may not be, considering the biases of SurveyUSA's methodology. Undecided voters over 50 years old—who make up 43 percent of all voters—are trending toward him by a 12 point margin, far more than the lead for McGinn among younger voters.
Another metric that seems to give Mallahan a boost is gender. Although men are evenly split on the candidates (one point difference), women prefer Mallahan by a four points. And 15 percent of women are undecided, six percent more than men.
Undecided voters also don't seem impressed by McGinn's softening stance on the tunnel; 28 percent say McGinn's new position makes them less likely to vote for him but only 17 percent of undecideds say they're more likely to vote for him. Fifty percent don't give a shit about his new position on the tunnel.
A few other interesting points Mallahan's holds strong support among Republicans, conservatives, and moderates. Mallahan has also been moderately more successful at wooing Nickels voters—49 percent of them now support Mallahan and 40 percent support McGinn. Voters who make less than $50,000 a year—working class folks, not surprisingly—support McGinn by a 10-point margin. But the working class folks making under $50,000 a year are less than one-third of all likely voters.
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I think a lot of voters are going to do what I did: lean Mallahan on principle, but vote McGinn when it becomes apparent that Mallahan doesn't actually exist inside that nice suit of his.
The idea that SurveyUSA polls might be missing younger voters is interesting, but remember that young people also tend not to turn out.
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Maybe the most retarded thing I've ever read and utterly bereft of supporting data. McGinn wants to kill the project that would employ thousands of "working class folks."
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And it's not planners that make your experience worse, it's you. You are entirely in charge of your commute habits and methods, so don't foist this on planners and politicians for not accommodating you. Unlike transit, your own commute has no set schedule, so you can adjust it to any lengths necessary. Assuming you are less adaptable than transit-riders is really laughable.
If you still want to drive to work, find an alternate route or better method of getting around. You can also move, find a better job or just stew in your own self-pity. Giving up and rejecting the idea of using any alternatives to your current habits is a real strong reflection of the amount of thought put into your vote.
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At least for two that voted last night.
(yes, most of the Mallahan staffers are friends, and other than a couple hard cases, they'll be my friends again after we mercilessly crush them in this election).
You may think commuters have no set schedule, but employers tend to feel differently. They tend to want their employees to show up at set, predictable hours, not whenever they feel like it.
I have a good job but, like most middle class jobs, it doesn't pay enough to buy the luxury condos that make up the Seattle housing market. That means I have to commute in from somewhere. I can drive or I can take the bus, but either way I'm going to end up sitting in traffic.
"Take transit" is not an answer when transit depends on the same road system that McGinn wants to cripple to suit his anti-car agenda.
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You're a person who would not or can't choose transit, but there are people that would if they are given a real option like Light Rail or BRT. If you give those people the option, then people like you who won't or can't will have about the same space as you did before.
Like Baconcat said, roads serve capacity. If you build more roads, more people will drive because they have to. If you build transit, people can choose.
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Mallahan actually had a good talking point that he never followed up with policy. People of the Puget Sound like to think of ourselves as progressive environmentalists, but we need to follow those thoughts with action. Building a comprehensive transit system is in line with our progressive values. A new light-capacity highway is not.
If we were serious about our values, the Sounder would run more frequently and have lots of connector buses running through your neighborhood. But that means we need to take money away from new roads.
My point about spending time with my family was to counter your idea that the length of my commute doesn't matter as long as I can nap or read during it. It still matters, and if McGinn makes my bus ride longer that's a negative impact on my life.
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And commute time does matter, which is why McGinn is trying to get people to see that building up transit will decrease that time. The more reliable transit is, by running often, early and late, the more people will take it and demand that resources are given to it.
People like Mallahan say we can't give resources to transit because not enough people use it now, so we need to spend money on more roads until people use the inadequate transit we have. Of course, the more roads we build, the more people use them, which perpetuates the cycle. Study after study has shown that building roads never relieves congestion, it just adds more, which really makes your commute worse.
Plus, transit is more of a social good than roads because elders and disabled people who can't drive or people who can't afford a car are able to get around our region, which increases commerce and accessibility.
I don't disagree that transit is a good idea. I just don't think non-bus transit is likely to help me much, and McGinn's plans would make bus service worse, not better.
Light rail, as it's being planned in this area, is intended to "promote density," not help move people in existing neighborhoods. Because of that it's deliberately being built with no park-and-ride facilities. If you're not within walking distance of a station it's essentially irrelevant.
The Sounder is a great idea but its usefulness is somewhat limited by its sparse schedule. I don't really expect that to improve, since they don't own the tracks and have to work around BNSF's freight schedule. I take it sometimes, but it costs me an extra half hour round trip compared to the bus, or an extra hour compared to driving.
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