A day after a conservative poll of Wisconsin showed voters there overwhelmingly opposed to Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) plan to eliminate collective bargaining for thousands of state workers, conservative stalwart Dick Morris dropped his own poll of the state showing a similar result.
Fifty-four percent of the respondents to Morris’ poll said they were opposed to eliminating collective bargaining. Just 41% said they favored it.
The voters Morris polled did want some changes made to the union worker’s compensation plan. Basically the same ones the union has already offered.
From the results:
• By 74-18, they back making state employees pay more for their health insurance. • By 79-16, they support asking state workers to contribute more toward their pensions. • By 54-34, Wisconsin voters support ending the automatic deduction of union dues from state paychecks and support making unions collect dues from each member. • By 66-30, they back limiting state workers’ pay increases to the rate of inflation unless voters approve a higher raise by a public referendum.
In other words, voters in Wisconsin support many of the concessions the unions have already offered.
As past polling has shown, voters in Morris’ poll are generally split on Walker’s budget plan in total. Fifty-one percent of respondents support Walker’s budget in Morris’ poll and 47% oppose them. Morris did not publish the full questionnaire from his poll, making it somewhat difficult to know what exactly what the support for “Walker’s proposed reforms” means.
Morris notes that results from the poll spell out one thing: Walker needs to change course on the whole collective bargaining thing.
“For Governor Walker to prevail, he must focus on his goal of achieving reform in schools. He will not prevail as long as his proposal is essentially negative in nature (i.e. limiting collective bargaining),” Morris writes. “But if he emphasizes the positive intent that lies behind the proposal (i.e. giving schools the flexibility and freedom to implement education reforms), he will find a solid public majority behind him.”
Morris surveyed 409 likely voters in Wisconsin on Monday and Tuesday. The margin of error is 4%. Read Morris’ post here.
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