Poll: Californians like plastic grocery bag ban
November 03, 2014 | 05:49 PM
By a nearly 2-to-1 margin, California voters support a recent statewide law banning disposable plastic grocery bags at supermarkets, according to the latest USCDornsife/Los Angeles Times Poll, which was released today.
Six in 10 Californians said they support the ban, which also requires grocery stores to offer paper or other reusable bags for 10 cents each, while 35 percent of voters oppose the law, the poll showed.
The poll, the largest statewide survey of registered voters, sampled 1,537 California voters from October 22-29, and includes a significant oversample of Latino voters as well as one of the most robust cell phone samples in the state, USC said.
The survey was conducted by Democratic polling firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research and Republican polling firm American Viewpoint, and has a margin of error of +/- 2.9 percentage points.
Voters were read arguments made by both supporters and opponents of the law — opponents stating that the ban constitutes a hidden tax and is another example of government overreach, and proponents stating that the ban will reduce pollution and protect wildlife, the environment and people’s health, USC said in a news release.
After being read those statements, 59 percent of California voters said they would uphold the plastic bag ban if it were put to a vote, as opposed to 34 percent of voters who said they would vote to overturn the law, according to the poll. Forty-nine percent of voters said they felt “strongly” about upholding the law.
When asked to pick their biggest concern about the ban, 43 percent of Californians said that the law was “just more government regulation and overreach”; 19 percent said the law puts a hidden tax on people, and 18 percent said the law could cost the state jobs.
“This is the same challenge that caused Republicans in Congress to change their message on Obamacare from ‘repeal’ to ‘replace,’” said Dan Schnur, director of the USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times Poll and executive director of the Unruh Institute of Politics of USC.
“It’s always more difficult to convince voters to undo something that’s already been done than to try something new. It’s an uphill fight for the ban’s opponents, so they’ll need to take a general argument about government overreach and sharpen it into a more specific fight about taxes."
▪ Los Angeles Times — Statewide ban on plastic grocery bags has broad support
▪ USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times Poll — Questionnaire and results on plastic grocery bag question
Six in 10 Californians said they support the ban, which also requires grocery stores to offer paper or other reusable bags for 10 cents each, while 35 percent of voters oppose the law, the poll showed.
The poll, the largest statewide survey of registered voters, sampled 1,537 California voters from October 22-29, and includes a significant oversample of Latino voters as well as one of the most robust cell phone samples in the state, USC said.
The survey was conducted by Democratic polling firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research and Republican polling firm American Viewpoint, and has a margin of error of +/- 2.9 percentage points.
Voters were read arguments made by both supporters and opponents of the law — opponents stating that the ban constitutes a hidden tax and is another example of government overreach, and proponents stating that the ban will reduce pollution and protect wildlife, the environment and people’s health, USC said in a news release.
After being read those statements, 59 percent of California voters said they would uphold the plastic bag ban if it were put to a vote, as opposed to 34 percent of voters who said they would vote to overturn the law, according to the poll. Forty-nine percent of voters said they felt “strongly” about upholding the law.
When asked to pick their biggest concern about the ban, 43 percent of Californians said that the law was “just more government regulation and overreach”; 19 percent said the law puts a hidden tax on people, and 18 percent said the law could cost the state jobs.
“This is the same challenge that caused Republicans in Congress to change their message on Obamacare from ‘repeal’ to ‘replace,’” said Dan Schnur, director of the USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times Poll and executive director of the Unruh Institute of Politics of USC.
“It’s always more difficult to convince voters to undo something that’s already been done than to try something new. It’s an uphill fight for the ban’s opponents, so they’ll need to take a general argument about government overreach and sharpen it into a more specific fight about taxes."
▪ Los Angeles Times — Statewide ban on plastic grocery bags has broad support
▪ USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times Poll — Questionnaire and results on plastic grocery bag question
