Voters’ overall outlook for 2024 largely unchanged from a year ago

With a new legislative session in Olympia set to begin next week, Washington voters said in a new Crosscut/Elway poll they’d like legislators to spend on social services — and also to repeal taxes.  

Since the last session, the Evergreen State brought in $1 billion in new revenue from a new capital gains tax and carbon pricing system, more than legislators anticipated.

In light of the windfall, 84% of survey participants said they favored or strongly favored putting more money into mental health programs and curbing opioid use; 75% supported rebates on utility bills for lower-income families; and 66% wanted more money for housing and programs to help people experiencing homelessness.

But 57% also favored repealing the state’s new capital gains tax. 

In a separate question, only 7% favored keeping spending at current levels and putting the additional money into state reserves.

“The unexpected budget surplus and conflicting public priorities for how to use it sets legislators up for a challenging 60-day session,” said pollster Stuart Elway. 

Meanwhile, voter outlook — which measures how well participants think things will go in the next year — remained nearly unchanged from last year. While 60% said things are likely to get much better or somewhat better for their own households, only 34% said they expected the same for the country as a whole. 

In every poll since 1992, voters have predicted better outcomes in their own lives than for the nation, though the 26-point gap is the largest it’s been since 2019. Whether forecasting for their own lives, their communities, the state or the whole country, Democrats were significantly more optimistic than Republicans. Voters under age 35 and over age 65 were also more optimistic.

According to participants, the most important issues facing state legislators in 2024 are the economy (cited by 32%), public safety (22%), homelessness (22%) and taxes (17%). These same four issues were noted in similar numbers this time a year ago. 

Results from polling questions on the upcoming race for governor will be released next week. 

The poll was conducted Dec. 26-28, with 403 registered voters in Washington. Nearly 30% of respondents participated in live calls by landline; 37% by live cell phone calls; and 34% participated online after text message invitation. 

It has a margin of error of ± 5% at a 95% confidence level. This means that had this same survey been conducted 100 times, the results would be within 5 percentage points of the results reported here at least 95 times.

Crosscut’s reporting on the Crosscut/Elway Poll is available for free republication by any news outlet as part of the Republish Collection.