Two more polls about the charter school amendment show conflicting results, but even the most optimistic still shows decreased support since September. Opponents of the Amendment 1 power grab are winning.

Wayne Washington wrote for the AJC 12 October 2012, Poll shows tight race for charter schools amendment,

By a slim margin, likely voters support a constitutional amendment that would create a commission to consider charter school applications, a poll conducted for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution shows.

The proposed amendment has the support of 45 percent of likely voters, with 42 percent opposed to it. Another 13 percent told pollsters they don’t know about the amendment or offered no answer. The poll, taken this week, has a margin of error of 5.3 percentage points.

Polls conducted for supporters of the amendment show it has more support than what the AJC found. A poll conducted for opponents show that a small majority of voters would vote against changing the constitution….

The poll of 908 adults was conducted Oct. 8-11 by Abt SRBI of New York.

The poll conducted for opponents presumably is the HEG-GPS poll conducted 4 and 5 October. Polls conducted for supporters would be all the previous ones.

Then there’s the one conducted by telephone 25 October 2012 for WSBTV by Landmark Communications and Rosetta Stone Communications. WSBTV says:

According to the latest Landmark Rosetta Stone poll of likely voters, 47 percent of Georgians say they will vote for the charter school amendment, while 37 percent will vote no. The remaining 16 percent are undecided….

On Thursday, 500 random likely voters were polled at 8 p.m. The margin of error for the poll is 4.3 percent.

Mark Rountree wrote for Peach Pundit 26 October 2012, New Polling Results on Presidential Race and Charter Schools,

Our firm released a joint poll today of the Presidential race and Charter Schools Amendment. We (Landmark Communications) conducted the poll jointly with Rosetta Stone Communications last evening for Channel 2 News in Atlanta….

2. There is a stark difference in levels of support based on the age of the voter. Younger voters are strongly supportive of the Amendment (57-32% among those aged 18-35), while older voters slightly oppose the Amendment (40-41% in opposition among those over age 64).

That’s an interesting point, which indicates where opponents should focus their efforts: on students and parents with school-age children.

3. There is very little difference in support or opposition based on gender, race or political party. In other words, there is no significant difference based on whether a voter is a Republican or a Democrat, a male or a female, or based on race.

On the other hand, I wonder if maybe the small sample size didn’t let this most recent poll miss the party differences, compared to what the early October poll with a larger sample size found.

4. Support is much greater in the 15-County Metro Atlanta area than outside of it. 54% of voters in the Metro Atlanta area support the Amendment while 32% oppose. Outside of Metro Atlanta 42% oppose it while 41% support it.

That would match with anecdotal evidence I’ve seen that a large part of what’s driving this thing is people in DeKalb County who don’t like their school board and are willing to sabotage the entire state instead of working to change that local county board.

5. To keep perspective about the findings of this poll: With a week and a half until the election, neither side has a majority of the vote. Supporters of the Charter Schools Amendment currently have the lead but with 16% of the vote remaining undecided, this vote remains open for either side to win.

And to add some more perspective: even this most positive poll for amendment supporters shows a Yes percentage smaller than any of the pre-October polls, so even in this best-case poll for the amendment shows support for it dropping over time. And the other October polls show even lower support.

I still say Amendment 1 is going down in flames worse than T-SPLOST did. We’ll know in a week and a day.

Vote No on Amendment 1!

-jsq

PS: And remember to also vote No on multi-year contract Amendment 2, which was sponsored by the same Georgia Senate ALEC’s “our state legislators” who sponsored the two charter school bills in the Senate.

-jsq

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