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The Well-Kept Secret of Clean Elections

Draft Report to the New Jersey Citizens' Clean Election Commission

Submitted by:

Dr. Peter Woolley, Fairleigh Dickinson University

Dr. Tim Vercellotti, Rutgers University

Nov. 21, 2005

Introduction

This report summarizes the results of three surveys designed to measure public attitudes about campaign finance reform in general and the Clean Elections Program in particular. Fairleigh Dickinson University, through its PublicMind Poll, conducted two statewide surveys of voters in late September and early November. In late October the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling at Rutgers University polled voters in the 6^th and 13^th Assembly districts, the two districts that were designated for participation in the Clean Elections pilot project.

The Fairleigh Dickinson surveys were designed to measure changes in awareness of the Clean Elections program, as well as attitudes about public financing of legislative campaigns, from late September to early November. The aim of the Eagleton survey was to measure whether awareness of the Clean Elections pilot project was higher in the targeted districts than in the rest of the state, and whether attitudes about public financing of legislative campaigns differed in the targeted districts compared to the rest of the state.

Statewide Surveys

Fairleigh Dickinson University's PublicMind conducted two statewide voter surveys in New Jersey, posing a series of 10 questions related to the state's experimental Clean Elections legislation.  The surveys intended to measure voters' knowledge of the legislation as well as their involvement in and attitudes towards the Assembly races in the district where they live. The surveys also intended to measure any changes in voter attitudes over the course of the fall campaign.  Both surveys were conducted by telephone using random-digit dialing (RDD). The first of the surveys was conducted from September 21 through September 26 with a randomly selected sample of 596 likely voters statewide. The second, a follow-up survey, was conducted from October 28 to Nov. 2 with a randomly selected sample of 355 likely voters. Both surveys were meant to serve as a baseline, or control, against the survey conducted in the two Assembly districts to which the experimental legislation applied. The costs of the two surveys were underwritten in part by the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce and in part by Fairleigh Dickinson University.

September Statewide Survey

Topline results for the September survey were:

• Three of four (75%) said they trust the state legislature to do what is right only some or none of the time, while only 23% said they trust the state legislature to do what is right most or all of the time.
• Only 13% said they were not at all concerned that people who give money to campaigns might also influence the legislature after the election, while 87% said they were somewhat or very concerned that campaign donors influence legislation.
• Four of five (82%) likely voters reported they heard little or nothing at all about the state's Clean Elections legislation.
• Voters were split on the question of whether public financing can reduce large donors' influence over the political process: 43% reported they were not at all confident that public financing will work while 44% said they were “somewhat” confident that public financing can work. Only 9% said they were “very” confident public financing can work, while another 5% said they didn't know.
• Four of five likely voters (80%) also reported they had heard or read little or nothing about the Assembly race in their district. Only 5% said they had heard quite a lot.
• Most people also reported that they had received no campaign advertisements by mail for their Assembly race (73%), heard no radio or TV ads (69%), saw no ads on the internet (87%), nor read any articles about the race in the newspaper (55%).
• When asked whether their local campaign for state Assembly focused more on personality or issues, more than a third (38%) could not offer an opinion.

November Statewide Survey

Results of the November survey differed little or not at all from the September survey despite respondents reporting that they had been exposed to some campaign advertising.

• Voters' natural cynicism about government persisted, with 79% saying they could trust the legislature only some or none of the time to do what is right. (In September the figure was 75%.)
• Almost 9 in 10 voters (88%) said they were somewhat or very concerned that large campaign donors influence legislation (compared to 87% in September).
• Still, four of five likely voters (79%) said they heard little or nothing at all about the new, experimental campaign finance rules (compared to 82% in September).
• As to whether they thought public financing might reduce the influence of large donors over legislation, 39% continued to say it would not (compared to 43% in September). Only 6% were “very” confident public financing would help matters (compared to 9% in September). And 49% were “somewhat” confident that public financing could help (compared to 44% in September).These changes are all within the margin of error of the studies.
• Even at this late point in the campaign, 63% of likely voters said they had heard little or nothing at all about the Assembly race in their district (compared to 80% in September).
• Half (49%) said they heard no radio of TV ads for the Assembly race in their district, while 85% said they had seen nothing about it on a Web site. But a majority (57%) said they had seen an article in the newspaper.
• When asked whether their local campaign for state Assembly focused more on personality or issues, a quarter (27%) still did not venture an opinion, but 43% said the campaign focused more on personal characteristics of the candidates and 29% said the campaign focused more on the candidates' position on issues.

Late October Survey in the Clean Elections Districts

The Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling at Rutgers University asked the same questions of a random sample of 500 registered voters in the two Clean Elections pilot districts – Assembly districts 6 and 13 – October 24 through October 31. (Although only one pair of candidates qualified for Clean Elections funding in the 6^th District, and no one qualified in the 13^th District, Eagleton opted to study both districts because of the publicity surrounding the initiative in both districts.)  The survey was conducted by telephone and respondents were selected at random from a list of voters in each district obtained from Camden County (which encompasses the 6^th District) and Middlesex and Monmouth counties (which encompass the 13^th District). The sample consisted of 250 voters in each district. The sample in the 13^th District was a quota sample so that the proportion of voters participating in the survey from Middlesex and Monmouth counties reflected the distribution of voters from those counties in the 13^th District.  The cost of the survey was underwritten in part by the Fund for New Jersey and in part by the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University.

Topline results from the district-level survey were:[1]

• Political cynicism in the district mirrored that of the statewide numbers. Seventy-seven percent of likely voters and 79% of registered voters said they could trust the state legislature to do what is right only some or none of the time.
• Eighty-nine percent of likely voters and 86% of registered voters were very or somewhat concerned that donors to campaigns might influence legislation.
• Awareness of the Clean Elections initiative was marginally higher in the Assembly districts than statewide. Twenty-nine percent of likely voters and 26% of registered voters in the districts said they had heard or read “quite a lot” or “some” about the Clean Elections legislation, compared to 20% in the statewide poll in early November.
• Although awareness of the legislation was slightly higher in the districts than statewide, more than two-thirds of likely and registered voters in the 6^th and 13^th districts said they did not know whether their Assembly district was one of the districts in the Clean Elections program. Twenty-three percent of likely voters in the 6^th District and 18% of likely voters in the 13^th District correctly answered yes, as did 20% of registered voters in the 6^th District and 17% of registered voters in the 13^th District.
• Forty-two percent of likely voters and 41% of registered voters in the two districts were “not confident at all” that public financing of campaigns would reduce the influence of large donors in the political process, similar to the skepticism expressed by likely voters in the statewide survey in early November. Only 8% of likely voters and 7% of registered voters were very confident, with 44% of likely and registered voters saying they were somewhat confident.
• Awareness of the Assembly race in the districts was low, and similar to that expressed by likely voters in the early November statewide poll.  Fifty-eight percent of likely voters and 61% of registered voters said they had heard or read just a little or nothing at all about the races.
• Information about the Assembly races was most likely to come in direct-mail advertising or newspaper articles. Sixty-percent of likely voters and 61% of registered voters said they had received campaign advertising in the mail in the previous month. Fifty-eight percent of likely voters and 55% of registered voters said they had gotten information from an article or articles in the newspaper. Forty-four percent of likely voters and 45% of registered voters had heard or seen a radio or television ad about the race, and only 8% of likely voters and 10% of registered voters had gotten information from a web site. All of the numbers were fairly close to those reported in the early November statewide survey.
• Respondents were more likely to say the campaign for Assembly seats from their district focused on the personal characteristics of the candidates, as opposed to their issue positions. Forty-five percent of likely voters and 43% of registered voters said personal characteristics, while 22 percent of likely voters and 24 percent of registered voters said issue positions. The response patterns also were similar to those from the early November statewide survey.

Conclusions

The only measure which appears to have changed significantly from the September statewide survey to the November statewide survey is the percentage of voters who had heard or read something about the Assembly race in their district.  By November 36% said they had heard some or quite a lot about their Assembly race, compared to just 18% in September.

However, even if the percentage of voters who had heard about their assembly race doubled from September to November, the percentage who had heard about the Clean Election legislation remained essentially unchanged at the state level. Likewise, measures of voters' trust in the legislature, as well as measures of concern about the influence of big money, were unchanged in the course of the campaign.

The attempt to measure voters' attitudes toward public financing may have been unsuccessful. It is not clear that respondents had thought much about the public financing of elections. The overall response in both statewide surveys was bland, with about half (49%) venturing that they were “somewhat” confident  that public financing could help reduce the influence of large donors on the legislative process.  Only 6% said they were very confident. Nearly 40% said they had no confidence public financing would work.  There were no significant differences in the responses of Republicans and Democrats or in the responses of conservatives and liberals.  Nor were there any differences in the responses based on race or age.

Likewise, the attempt to measure voters' perceptions of whether their Assembly campaign focused more on issues or more on the personalities of the candidates may have been unsuccessful. Most voters, even late in the race, heard or read little or nothing about the Assembly race and were, thus, unlikely to be able to judge whether the race focused more on personalities or more on issues.  Even late in the race more than a quarter of respondents did not venture an opinion on this question.

At the district level, the data suggest that the Clean Elections project had no effect on public attitudes toward public financing of campaigns or trust in government. Attitudes in those areas did not differ markedly from opinions expressed in the statewide surveys.

Awareness of the Clean Elections initiative was a little higher in the targeted districts than it was in the rest of the state, but this is not surprising given the probability that media coverage of Clean Elections was higher in the districts than elsewhere in the state.  And still, the extent of public awareness, even in the targeted districts, appears to have been quite limited. While voters in the targeted districts were more likely than statewide voters to say they had heard of the Clean Elections project, more than two-thirds of voters in the targeted districts said they did not know whether their district was part of the initiative.

There is no evidence in the study to suggest that the Clean Elections legislation had any effect on voters' attitudes either statewide or in the two Assembly districts to which the legislation applied. There is no evidence, either statewide or in the two Assembly districts, that there was increased trust in the legislature, or increased interest in the Assembly races, or increased knowledge of the candidates, or optimism about the results of public financing.

Contacts:

For more information, please call (201) 692-7032.