Lessons of the Failure of Initiative 1631, the Washington State Carbon Fee, Part 1: Election Analysis

This blog will examine the failure of Initiative 1631, the carbon fee initiative, which would have placed an escalating tax on carbon-based fuels and then given the authority to distribute the funds to an appointed 15-person board.   It was the most expensive initiative battle in Washington State history, with reported expenses of nearly 50 million dollars, and it failure received both national and international attention.

  

Why did 1631 fail?   Did "big oil" secure its downfall?    Was 1631 essentially flawed?   These are all important questions, because we need to know how to proceed in the future.   Global warming is a serious challenge for mankind and we can't afford to waste such extraordinary resources, with nothing to show for it.  Only knowing why it failed can we find a better way forward.  This is the first in a series of blogs to analyze the situation.

Election Data

    1631 was decisively defeated:  56.6% were against, 43.% for:  a large 13% loss.   Only three counties produced a majority for the initiative:  King (mainly Seattle) voters, Jefferson (mainly Port Townsend folks) and San Juan County (see below).

The core support for I-1631 was from liberal-leaning urban and tribal areas, with most rural and suburban locations voting against.   This division is illustrated in Kitsap county, with wealthy/heavily Democratic Bainbridge Island and the Suquamish tribal areas voting for and most of the rest of the county opposing.

It is instructive to compare the I-1631 vote with than of I-732, the revenue-neutral carbon tax initiative of 2016.    Results were only slightly better (a shift of less than 3 points), with only San Juan and King County supporting the carbon tax.

There was a nice 1631 analysis published in Crosscut Magazine by some of my colleagues at the UW (Steven M. Karceski, Nives Dolšak and Aseem Prakash).  First, comparing county votes of 1631 and 732, they found a distinct pattern, with greater support for 1631 (over 732) in the most liberal/Democratic counties (King County showed roughly a 5% improvement), while ground was lost in some of the more Republican counties of the eastern side of the State).   As some post-election polling done by the Yes side confirmed, I-1631 heightened the partisan divide across our state:  few Republicans voted for it and most supporters were Democrats.

But interestingly, many liberal/Democratic voters voted against it.   As shown in the Crosscut article many voters who supported Maria Cantwell (the champion of coastal weather radar!), did not vote for the initiative (see graph below).  That is true in EVERY county of the state  That fact will going to turn out to be very important.

I attended a meeting on November 28 sponsored by the Low Carbon Prosperity Institute, which included some post-election poll results sponsored by the Yes on 1631 campaign.  The pollster,  Dave Metz of FM3 Research, found that both No and Yes sides were effective in getting their messaging out, and noted the extreme partisanship of the electorate on this ballot measure.  He found that about 25% were dead set against it (mainly core Republicans in eastern WA), about 30% were worried about climate change but thought 1631 was bad policy), and the rest were worried about climate and either supported the initiative or were willing to give it a chance.

So, which Democrats did not vote for 1631?   And how did lower-income and minority folks feel about the initiative?   Well, I decided to try my hand at election analysis using official Washington State demographic data.

First, what about income and voting preferences on 1631?  Here is a plot of percent Yes vote versus median county income for all WA State counties.  A least-squares linear fit trend line is shown as well.   In general, counties with lower income tended to vote no on 1631.  The best fit line showing this relationship explained about 30% of the variation.

What about minorities (non-white, state of WA definition)?  A lot of scatter, but a tendency for a No vote when minority percentages increase.

How about hispanic groups?  (see below).   A stronger relationship.  The three counties that voted for the initiative have low-hispanic populations and heavily hispanic districts were strongly against the initiative.

All of these, and other, results, suggest that lower income and minority citizens of our state, many of them Democratic leaning, were uncomfortable with the initiative.  This is consistent with direct feedback I received when talking to primarily working-class groups (such my talk to facilities management folks on snow/ice conditions) and the fact that many labor unions in our state (e.g., the steelworkers and construction unions) were against it.

I believe that the bottom line is that 1631 lost because most Republicans were against it, low income, construction/labor, and minority groups were wary of its economic impacts on their lives, and a significant proportion of climate-concerned folks, many of them long-term Democrats, were uncomfortable with aspects of the policy.  

In fact, there was clear signs that 1631 was in trouble early in the election period--well before the No campaign started to aggressively push its message.  The Crosscut/Elway poll, based on sampling in early October, showed only 50% supported the initiative, based on a telephone poll.  Elway himself said that only measures that started in the high-50s% had much of a chance.

But it was worse than that.  The questions told folks that "large emitters" would pay the bill and that all kinds of wonderful things would happen (see below).  Even with such a give-way, only 50% would support it.   A profound warning sign--many people did not buy it.

In the next blog on this subject I will examine the politics of 1631, suggesting that a poorly constructed initiative, a flawed strategic plan by the 1631 folks,  an unwillingness of the population to sacrifice to deal with global warming, and a steady, disciplined effort by the No folks, resulted in the decisive defeat of 1631.