Thursday, March 06, 2008

Funny Numbers in the Governor's Race

Yesterday, The Bellingham Heralds Politics blog linked to a Rasmussen poll that sez, in the race for Governor, Gregoire and Rossi are tied.

The Rasmussen Reports website says:

"This telephone survey of 500 Likely Voters was conducted by Rasmussen Reports on February 28, 2008. The margin of sampling error for the survey is +/- 4.5 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence."

I'm left wondering where Rasmussen got his numbers. Did all those "Likely Voters" live East of the Cascaded? What makes me so doubtful about Rasmussen's numbers is that a week before his survey, The Washington Poll did a survey that produced drastically different results:

Although Republicans continue to drone on about how bad they imagine things to be here in Washington State, I think most citizens have noticed that we are doing quite well in relation to other States. "Forbes’ annual survey ranked Washington state number five in the nation for business climate." "Fortune magazine rated Washington the fourth best state in which to start a business—specifically citing our “low taxes”." "The Pew-sponsored Government Performance Project (GPP) graded Washington state a B+. From the individual scores, Washington ranked as the third best state government, with only Utah and Virginia doing better."

While Republicans babble on about how over-taxed they imagine us to be, the fact is that our total state and local taxes here in Washington State are average. Our total state and local tax burden is 11.1% and the national average is 11%.

Over at HorsesAss.org, Darryl has written a very interesting analysis of the efficiency of Washington State governments. We get a lot of bang for our tax dollars.

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