New poll sees if WA cares about payroll tax to fund WA Cares program

Jul. 23—OLYMPIA — For about a year, many Washington workers have paid a 0.58% tax on their wages to fund a first-in-the-nation long-term care insurance program, an attempted antidote to the looming cost of caring for an aging population.

But a new statewide poll suggests a narrow majority of likely voters, 52%, would support a ballot initiative making the tax optional, while 27% said they were certain to vote no and 22% of voters said they were undecided.

Washington ballot initiative on WA Cares

Question: On Initiative 2124, which would allow people to opt out of a 0.58% payroll tax that funds the state's long-term care insurance program, known as WA Cares, are you ...?

Source: SurveyUSA (Mark Nowlin / The Seattle Times)

Respondents also supported two other GOP-backed ballot initiatives — Initiative 2117, which would repeal the state's carbon market program, and Initiative 2109 to repeal the state's new capital gains tax — by margins ranging from 14 to 23 percentage points, signaling a threat to a slate of recent policies on the environment, taxes and aging passed by majority Democrats.

Initiative 2066 on requiring utilities to provide natural gas to customers, which has not yet been certified, got the most support among the four initiatives polled.

The backers of Initiative 2124, which will appear on ballots in November, say they believe workers should have a choice as to whether to pay into the program.

Opponents of the initiative say letting people opt out of paying into the program, a safety net providing up to $36,500 in inflation-adjusted benefits, could cause it to collapse. Benefits aren't scheduled to become available until 2026.

Hallie Balch, a spokesperson for Let's Go Washington, the group backing the initiative and several others expected on the November ballot, said the campaign's job now was to make sure that the 22% of undecided voters "understand what is at stake this November."

"We'll be in every community, every neighborhood and every corner of Washington this summer to ensure that everyone hears the message to vote yes, pay less," she said. "This is about providing choice to workers in the state and fixing what's broken."

The No on I-2124 campaign criticized the language used to conduct the WA Poll, arguing that to accurately gauge voter sentiment, respondents should be provided the language that will appear on the ballot as well as a statement about the effects of a proposed measure on the state budget. (That's a new requirement, passed by state lawmakers in 2022, though state GOP leaders challenged it for these initiatives and a state Supreme Court decision on the case is pending.)

"Surveying voters with fictional concept language, and without the legally required fiscal impact statement, will generate skewed results," said Kristin Hyde, a spokesperson for the campaign, which has received the bulk of its funding from the ballot fund of SEIU 775, a union representing long-term care workers.

Hyde also highlighted polling released last week commissioned by the No on I-2124 campaign suggesting that fewer than half of respondents supported the initiative.

In that poll, respondents were asked using the information on the ballot title, which doesn't mention the tax. The description included a statement that said the initiative "would decrease funding for Washington's public insurance program for persons requiring long-term care."

Supporters of WA Cares also commissioned polling last fall suggesting that when respondents are provided information about the impact of the initiative on funding for the program, they are less inclined to support it.

The state's Office of Financial Management estimates that if the initiative is passed by voters, it could cost the state about $12.6 million to $31.3 million in administrative costs, and money coming into the state is projected to decline as people would likely opt out of the program.

But it's unclear how many current and future workers would decide to keep paying in, so the total potential effect on money coming in and money getting spent on the program was "indeterminate," the office found.

And there are still nearly four months to go until Election Day.

Pollsters from SurveyUSA, which conducted the poll on behalf of The Seattle Times, KING 5 and The University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public, noted that opposition to ballot measures tends to go up as the election approaches and as campaigns against them gear up, "possibly because there is a psychological tendency to prefer to keep the status quo."

Gail Morehouse, 65, of Puyallup, said in an interview that while she likes WA Cares, she thinks the tax should be optional.

"I'm hoping that people will still do it," she said. "But the problem, again, is people paying the taxes who are working every day, they're having a hard time surviving as well on their positions."

Rickie Byers, 73, of Lynnwood, said in an interview that while he was a little more hesitant about it, he was in favor of WA Cares.

"I think this is something, whether we like it or not, we're going to pay for it one way or the other," he said. "And I think this is something that we need. And of course it's going to cost the workers more. Everything costs, eventually, the consumers, the workers more. There's just no way around it."

Perhaps unsurprisingly, younger respondents were more likely to support making the tax optional. Fifty-eight percent of 18- to 34-year-olds supported having the option to opt out, for instance, compared with 56% of 35- to 49-year-olds, 53% of 50- to 64-year-olds and 40% of people 65 and older.

Balch said that young people "are seeing a substantial amount of their paycheck taxed away and, in the case of 2124, it's going to fund a pseudo-long-term care program that they have no guarantee they'll see a return from."

Support for the opt-out was highest among Republicans, with 62% saying they supported the measure compared to 53% of Democrats and 43% of independents.

Low-income Washingtonians were less likely to support opting out. About 39% of those with incomes below $40,000 supported making the tax optional, while 56% of those making $40,000 to 80,000 a year, and 55% of those making above $80,000 a year, supported making the tax optional.

The initiative was more popular among men, with 57% of them saying they were certain to vote yes. Forty-six percent of women said they were certain to vote yes, and a higher share of women — 28% — said they were undecided. Supporters of WA Cares have noted that much of the responsibility for elder care falls unpaid on women, some of whom leave the workforce to meet those obligations to parents or other relatives.

Sixty-three percent of Hispanic voters said they were certain to vote yes to make the tax optional, compared with 53% of white voters, 46% of Asian voters and 30% of voters of other races. Too few Black respondents were interviewed for that data to be meaningful.

There was not much variation between voters in Eastern Washington, Western Washington and in the Seattle metro area. But support for opting out of the tax was lower in suburban areas compared with urban and rural Washington, where support for the measure was at 57% and 56%, respectively.

The WA Poll was conducted among 708 likely voters between July 10 and 13, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points. More results will be released this week, including on voters' views on abortion and other issues.

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