What do APN readers think about Prop Q?

The results of the APN poll!

Jack Craver

Jack Craver

— 3 min read
What do APN readers think about Prop Q?

Yesterday I invited you to take a survey on Prop Q. I am very grateful to the 317 of you who took 17 seconds out of your day to complete it. To the more than 600 of you who opened the email but didn't take the poll ... I don't get it. How can you resist taking a poll? I swear it's anonymous!

Without further ado:

Forms response chart. Question title: How will you vote on Prop Q?. Number of responses: 317 responses.

Among respondents, 54.6% say they will vote in support of Prop Q, 40.7% say they will vote against, 2.8% say they are not sure, and 1.9% say they will not vote.

Is that a good omen for Prop Q? No, I don't think so.

The next result shows why:

Forms response chart. Question title: How did you vote in the presidential election? . Number of responses: 317 responses.

89.9% of these respondents voted for Kamala Harris. Only 5.4% voted for Trump and 4.6% voted for another candidate or didn't vote.

It's safe to say the Prop Q electorate will be far Trumpier than that. It's impossible to know exactly how much so ... but according to early vote data shared with me by longtime local operative Mark Littlefield, 17.7% of those who have voted so far have voted in Republican primaries in the past. Another 11.8% have voted in both party primaries.

Like I said before, mine is not a scientific poll. But it is another strong anecdotal signal to me that Prop Q is more likely than not to fail. I think it will likely win among Democrats but not by a large enough margin to survive the near-universal opposition from Austin's conservative minority.

Logo-gate & Salad-gate

I also asked readers how much their vote was affected by coverage of the city logo and/or the reporting on City Council members and the city manager taking liberties with their city credit cards. This was actually only supposed to be for people who are voting against Q, but some supporters ended up voting on it anyway:

Forms response chart. Question title: If you are voting against Prop Q, how much was your decision influenced by coverage of the city logo or travel/food spending by the city manager and Council members? . Number of responses: 188 responses.

62.2% said it didn't influence their vote at all, 29.3% said they were somewhat influenced by it and 8.5% said they were greatly influenced it.

Mayor Kirk Watson's report card:

Forms response chart. Question title: What grade would you give Mayor Kirk Watson as mayor? . Number of responses: 317 responses.

12.5% gave Watson an A; 49.2% gave him a B; 24.6% gave him a C, 9.7% gave him a D; and 4.1% gave him an F.

That sounds about right. Few are in love with the mayor, but equally few detest him.

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