The public opinion polling industry has ballooned in this nation to the point of saturation.
Candidates for most federal and major state offices conduct internal polls to see how they are faring and what stands they should take.
News media organizations conduct them to get a less partial perspective on the candidates and the issues, as well as to further the horse-racing narrative that has become the norm in the reporting on most major elections.
And those already in office are using them to shape policy — or in some cases to provide the appearance of public support for the direction in which they are already leaning.
That seems to be some of the motivation behind the survey recently commissioned by Mississippi House Speaker Jason White.
White, still in his first year in the job, released the poll results following a summit he convened last month on tax policy. It was no surprise that a majority of those polled said they were for tax cuts, whether those came in the form of further reducing the personal income tax or reducing the sales tax on groceries. If there’s ever been a public opinion poll in which a majority of respondents said they were against tax cuts for themselves, it does not come to memory.
If there was anything enlightening about the poll, it was its indication that tax cuts may not be the burning issue that White and some other Republicans, including Gov. Tate Reeves, would suggest they are. Less than a third of respondents combined said that either eliminating the state’s income tax or reducing or eliminating the grocery tax is their most important issue.
Maybe that’s because they don’t feel overburdened by state taxes, which are comparatively modest and already scheduled to come down further on the income side. The state has two more years of phasing in the largest tax cut in its history, and when that process is finished, Mississippi will have a flat tax on income of 4%, one of the lowest in the nation for states with a personal income tax.
Even if White’s polling had produced a loud cry for tax cuts, those in leadership are called to make decisions that sometimes go against public opinion. The public is not always aware of all of the considerations to weigh or has not taken the time to study them.
Mississippi, for example, does not know yet how all of the tax cuts passed in recent years are going to play out. The state treasury is healthy, but that health is based heavily on the bushels of federal money that were poured into Mississippi and all of the rest of the states in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. As that boom levels out, so will the state’s current surpluses.
The operative word should be “caution.” If there are to be any additional tax cuts, they should be modest and directed in those areas where Mississippi is high, such as the grocery tax, and not where it’s low, such as the income tax.
Public opinion polls are not good at probing those nuances. The questions are usually either too general, or they are slanted to produce the results that the person or group commissioning the survey desires.
Asking people whether they are for tax cuts is like asking them if they like ice cream. Of course they are going to say yes — that is, until services they depend on are cut or other taxes are raised to make up for what’s been reduced.
