Capitol Fax.com - Your Illinois News Radar

Tuesday, Mar 23, 2021 - Posted by Rich Miller

* Normington Petts poll taken for the Illinois Education Association February 11-21 of 1,000 Illinois adults reached via phone and online. Margin of error was +/-3.1 percent…

Would you say things in Illinois today are generally headed in the RIGHT DIRECTION or would you say things are off on the WRONG TRACK?

RIGHT DIRECTION 41%
WRONG TRACK 51%
DON’T KNOW 7%

The perception of the state is still underwater, but those are the best numbers I’ve seen in quite a long time. The Simon Poll has been showing a steady increase in the state’s “right direction” number since the 2018 election…

* OK, on to the IEA’s press release…

The Illinois Education Association (IEA) today released its third annual State of Education report, the only bipartisan poll asking Illinoisans about all aspects of public schools. There is a teacher shortage and the results show that Illinoisans believe COVID-19 will only make the problem worse. Also, the data show the COVID-19 pandemic has made teaching and learning more difficult, Illinoisans continue to trust educators most when it comes to all school-related matters and there is wide support for IEA’s health and safety related standards for schools during a pandemic.

“The people have spoken. They understand that COVID-19 has been difficult for students, educators and everyone else in our public-school system,” IEA President Kathi Griffin said. “In addition, they also support solutions that will make health and safety a top priority and ensure everyone in our schools is safe.”

Seventy-nine percent of Illinoisans are in favor of the following:

• Establish clear metrics, so districts know when to switch to remote learning to keep students and staff safe;
• Enforce guidance and requirements put forth by the Illinois Department of Public Health and the Illinois State Board of Education, and heed the recommendations of the Centers for Disease Control;
• Provide rapid COVID-19 testing in schools so infected students and staff can be identified before they spread the virus;
• Ensure education employees are not forced to work while ill.

The data show that on the whole, the public is very concerned about the teacher shortage and COVID-19 exacerbating the problem.

* Some selected questions and responses…

Do you think that public school teachers in your community are paid too little, too much or about right?

Too little 51%
Too much 12%
About right 31%
(Don’t know) 4%

I support the new law that sets the minimum teacher salary in Illinois at $40,000 per year

Strongly agree 36%
Somewhat agree 33%
Somewhat disagree 13%
Strongly disagree 15%
(Don’t know) 3%

TOTAL AGREE 70%
TOTAL DISAGREE 28%

As you may know, teachers in Illinois don’t pay into and therefore do not collect Social Security when they retire. Do you think that Illinois teachers should receive their full pension, see their pensions cut some or see their pensions eliminated?

Full pension 73%
Cut some 16%
Eliminated 6%
(Don’t know) 5%

Thinking about public school teachers in Illinois over the last year or so during the pandemic, do you think that teaching during the coronavirus pandemic has been much easier, somewhat easier, somewhat harder, or much harder for teachers?

Much easier 8%
Somewhat easier 11%
Somewhat harder 24%
Much harder 55%
(Don’t know) 2%

TOTAL EASIER 19%
TOTAL HARDER 79%

* Also, respondents were asked to rate these priorities from zero to ten. Here are the “high” ratings, in other words, the percent of those who chose 8-10…

Having high quality public schools 76%
Cleaning up corruption in state government 76%
Lowering taxes 65%
Reforming the state pension systems 49%
Balancing the state budget 65%
Reducing crime 74%
Jobs and economic growth 77%
Reducing racial divisions 63%
Reforming health care 64%

These pension-related responses are not unique to this poll, by the way. People are far more supportive of retirees than some folks would have you think.

More results and crosstabs are here.

* Also, you may have read a Tribune article this week about The COVID States Project’s polling. But the survey’s reporting is incredibly opaque. They only tell you approval numbers for governors and leave out results for disapproval and no opinion (and won’t provide them when asked), which seems silly to me. Also, while they claim the February polling for Illinois had a margin of error of “6,” they don’t disclose how many people were surveyed. And there’s some question about its nonprobability methodology, but that method is picking up adherents these days after some success last year (including with the polling I commissioned).

With that being said…

Ongoing surveys conducted by The COVID States Project, involving researchers from a four-university consortium that includes Northwestern, have monitored public attitudes surrounding the pandemic.

The group found that public approval of Pritzker’s handling of the pandemic has gone from 63.2% in the second half of April, about one month into his issuance of emergency restrictions, to 44.7% in February, the lowest of any sampling period in the survey.

That seems to be the norm…

The average governor has witnessed a small drop in approval since October (dropping from 48% in October to 46% in February, part of a long term decline in governor approval since we began our survey in April, when it was 64%).

However, the project found that Democratic governors tended to see an increase in approval, which Pritzker did not.

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Despite what you may have seen in recent Chicago media reports, African-Americans are actually becoming much less hesitant about vaccinations

Wednesday, Mar 17, 2021 - Posted by Rich Miller

* There are two big, undisclosed problems with this story…

Cook County has launched a new COVID-19 vaccine campaign, based in part on a survey showing that 46% of African-American residents say they likely would not get the shot or were unsure about getting it.

“The ‘My Shot’ campaign speaks directly to these individuals who need to hear from their neighbors about the safety of these shots and the importance of making the choice to get vaccinated,” Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle said Monday during a Facebook Live event.

The campaign drew on responses from about 1,100 Cook County residents surveyed earlier this year. Among other things, it found that, overall, 32% of respondents were hesitant about getting the vaccine. Broken down by race, 46% of Black and 35% of Latino residents “probably would not, definitely would not or were unsure if they would get the vaccine.”

Not trying to pick on the Sun-Times because every Chicago media outlet ran essentially the same piece. But, like I said, there are two problems here if you look at the actual poll commissioned by the county. I decided to wait until I received the results before posting anything about them.

1) The poll was taken January 25 through February 9. Those are relatively ancient numbers because more recent polling shows vaccine hesitancy, including among African-Americans, has been declining for months as more people get their shots. This is from a March 3-8 NPR/PBS Marist poll…

According to a new poll, vaccine hesitancy among African-Americans is now on par with reluctance among white Americans.

That poll is here. The results clearly show that Republican men are by far the most resistant to getting vaxed, with 50 percent saying they would be vaccinated or have been vaccinated and 49 percent saying they would not be vaccinated. That’s compared to 73 percent of Black people who said they will or have been vaccinated and 25 percent who said they wouldn’t. Other recent polls have shown much the same thing.

Recent national Latinx attitudes seem to be more in line with that Cook County poll, however. 63 percent said they will or have been vaxed, while 37 percent said they would not take the shot.

2) Cook County’s media rollout lumped “definitely would not,” “probably would not” and “unsure” into the same result. Those are three very different attitudes. The results for African-Americans on this outdated survey were 19 percent definitely would not, 16 percent probably would not and 13 percent unsure.

* None of this is meant to say that Cook County shouldn’t be launching a campaign to convince people to take their shots. But things can change in life, and sometimes things change fast. So, using polling results that are as much as 51 days old on a rapidly evolving topic makes little sense to me and risks perpetuating a stereotype.

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Pritzker back to square one with Illinoisans?

Monday, Mar 15, 2021 - Posted by Rich Miller

* My weekly syndicated newspaper column…

For the first year or so of his administration leading up to the beginning of the pandemic, Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s polling wasn’t exactly horrible, but it was still pretty darned underwhelming. And after some spectacular crisis-induced polling spikes last year, the governor has seemingly come back down to earth.

The first poll taken by Morning Consult after Pritzker was sworn into office in January of 2019 found his job approval rate at 40%, with his disapproval at 29% and 31% not saying either way. By the end of 2019, Morning Consult had his approve/disapprove at 43-41 with 16% not weighing in. An early February 2020 poll by Fako Research & Strategies found 39% of Illinois voters rated him positively, while 36% rated him negatively and 19% were neutral.

But then came the COVID-19 pandemic and Pritzker’s numbers really shot up, mainly because of his handling of the pandemic. Three polls in April and May of last year showed his pandemic job approval rating at 70% or higher and one had his overall job approval at 61-35. “He was bullet-proof,” a top Republican consultant recalled of those heady days.

What goes up often comes down, however, and by October, a quite prescient Change Research/Capitol Fax poll had Pritzker’s fave/unfaves at 48-45, possibly due at least in part to the unpopularity of his graduated income tax proposal.

A poll released last week that was conducted February 17-21 by Chip Englander’s firm 1892 Polling had Pritzker back to even, with 41% favorable and 41% unfavorable. The margin of error was +/-3.5 percent. Englander was a key figure in Bruce Rauner’s 2014 gubernatorial campaign, but I’ve always found his polling to be reliable.

Pritzker’s apparent problem now is the same problem he had in the early days: Lots of folks say they have no opinion either way about him – 18% in this instance.

A look at the crosstabs shows this is especially problematic with his party’s base. Black voters have a favorable opinion of Pritzker (58-14), but 29% said they had no opinion of the governor. Other groups with no opinion of the governor: 23% of women and Latinos; 21% of Democrats; 19% of Chicagoans and 17% of liberals. This more than just suggests that Pritzker has a serious enthusiasm issue.

There were some other warning signs in the poll. A quarter of Chicagoans said they had an unfavorable opinion of Pritzker, which is not far off the 28% of city voters who opposed the governor’s fair tax last November. Rauner beat Pat Quinn in 2014 with 21% of the city’s vote and lost to Pritzker four years later with just 15% of the city’s tally.

“We are where we need to be in the city and Downstate,” that aforementioned GOP consultant claimed. The key, he said, is the suburbs.

The “suburbs” classification in Englander crosstabs includes suburban Cook, DuPage and Lake counties. He’s separated those counties out for years because, an associate explained, that’s where the real battleground is. Pritzker took those three counties with 57% in 2018. This recent poll has the governor’s favorables in those counties at 47%, his unfavorables at 35% and “No opinion” at 18%.

This isn’t pandemic epidemiology here. Pritzker has to find a way to convince the large number of people with no stated opinion of him to move his direction. He has plenty of time to do it, but it’s more difficult to accomplish as the months click by for an incumbent.

As the virus hopefully fades away, it’ll also be easier to use pandemic-related issues against Pritzker, like the ongoing catastrophe at the Illinois Department of Employment Security, massive small business closures, the LaSalle Veterans’ Home deaths, etc. The criminal justice reform law is also going to be a very tricky issue to handle, if other states are any guide. And he needs to put some wins on the board to help people forget about his disastrous 2020 graduated income tax referendum.

In other words, Pritzker will have his own record to contend with instead of running against a horribly unpopular Republican incumbent in an off-year election during the term of a fabulously unpopular Republican president. The overall trend will not be so friendly next time, unless Pritzker gets lucky with a fatally flawed Republican opponent, or creates his own luck by quietly helping a far-right candidate across the primary finish line.

Crosstabs are here.

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