Asked if they are likely to support a 30-year program to expand transit and build a new rapid bus system in Cobb County, 63% of voters said they likely would, according to a new poll.
The findings of the poll, commissioned by a group of Cobb business leaders, indicate that the majority of the county is supportive or undecided on a 30-year, 1% sales tax to fund transit in next November’s election, while a quarter of voters are opposed to the idea.
Depending on how the question was worded, support for the transit tax ranged from 47% to 63%, undecideds ranged from 9-25%, and opposition was consistently around 25-28%.
The poll was commissioned by the Cobb Business Alliance, a 501(c)4 nonprofit formed in September. The group is headed by Cobb Chamber of Commerce Chairman Greg Teague, Chamber President/CEO Sharon Mason, and Amanda Seals, the chamber’s executive vice president of advocacy and government relations.
In an interview, Teague and Seals told the MDJ the group’s mission is to educate the public about the upcoming referendum, not take a position on it.
No chamber funds were used for the poll, though most of the people who contributed to the group to fund the poll are chamber members, Teague said.
“We wanted to not have a push poll or anything like that,” Seals said. “We wanted general questions to do a baseline of, where is the electorate across the county today? Of course, that could change … as different advocacy campaigns gear up, but we wanted to know, without trying to bend the twig one way or another.”
The poll was conducted by LINK Public Affairs, a Virginia-based political consulting firm, and Co/efficient, a Missouri-based pollster. It was conducted from Nov. 10-13 using mobile text response and landline interviews.
The poll received 1,320 responses and has a margin of error of 3%.
The proposed sales tax,…
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