LANSING – Michigan voters give Governor Rick Snyder highly negative marks for his record on K-12 education, according to a poll commissioned by Gongwer News Service.
The survey asked voters to rate the job Snyder has done handling K-12 education and asked them whether they would “give him a positive rating of excellent or pretty good or a negative rating of only fair or poor.”
Just 3 percent said excellent, 23 percent said pretty good, 26 percent said just fair and 36 percent said poor. The rest said they were undecided or refused to answer. That makes for a total positive rating of 26 percent to a total negative rating of 62 percent.
The Gongwer poll also asked voters whether in the past three years “the financial condition of your local public school district has caused the quality of the kindergarten through 12th grade education it provides to improve, get worse or remain about the same.”
Forty-five percent said “remain about the same,” 35 percent said get worse and 8 percent said improve. The rest said they were undecided or refused to answer.
The survey, conducted by the Lansing polling firm EPIC/MRA, comes as Snyder mounts a major push to emphasize that total state funding to K-12 education has risen under his watch in response to a major critique from Democrats, especially his gubernatorial challenger Mark Schauer, that the governor has cut funding to schools.
“It is clearly a story that is a serious problem for the governor,” EPIC/MRA President Bernie Porn said. “It should be of major concern to him especially that he is making claims about education that clearly given these numbers are not messages or claims that are washing with voters.”
Porn said his firm polls for many school districts and those surveys show that voters believe the state has cut funds to schools and that the top problem facing their local district is lack of funds. He said Mr. Snyder and the Republicans, aware that voter perception on K-12 schools is a weak point, are trying to mitigate the damage.
“That is a loser for him,” he said of Snyder arguing he has increased funds to K-12 education. “In old politics parlance, it would seem maybe they’re trying to confuse the issue.”
Even though the issue is the dominant argument at the moment between Schauer and Snyder, Porn said there will be many other issues in the mix that will help determine how much of a winning topic K-12 funding is for Schauer in the campaign, especially the need to raise more money so he can wage an aggressive television advertising campaign.
“It doesn’t matter what the message is if he doesn’t have the money to deliver it,” he said of Schauer.
The survey was conducted between February 5 (the day Mr. Snyder unveiled his budget recommendation for the 2014-15 fiscal year) and February 11 among 600 likely voters through live telephone interviews. The margin of error was plus or minus 4 percentage points.
Several notable splits showed up among various demographics.
On whether they approved of Snyder’s handling of K-12 schools, women gave Snyder worse marks with 25 percent giving him a positive rating to 65 percent negative compared to a 28-58 split among men.
There was a partisan divide as well, although even Snyder’s fellow Republicans were tepid about his performance on K-12 education with 42 percent giving him positive marks to 41 percent negative. That compared to a 15 percent positive and 78 percent negative split among Democrats and a 20-65 split among independents.
The gender division especially showed up among Republicans. While 47 percent of Republican men gave Snyder positive marks on K-12 education to 35 percent negative, only 38 percent of Republican women were positive on his handling of education to 46 percent negative.
Those with children gave Snyder worse marks than those without. While 23 percent of those polled with children said Snyder’s performance on K-12 education was positive to 67 percent negative, the split was 28-59 among those without children.
All age brackets gave Snyder negative marks for his handling of K-12 schools of more than 60 percent except for those 65 and older, where the split was 40 percent positive to 49 percent negative.
On the question of how the financial condition of the respondent’s local public school district has affected the quality of the education it provides, the partisan breakdown suggested broad reasons for concern in the governor’s office.
Among independents, 35 percent said financial conditions had caused their local school district to get worse compared to 7 percent saying improve and 46 percent who said stay the same. Democrats were more negative with a split of 8 percent saying improve, 45 percent saying get worse and 38 percent saying stay the same. The marks among Republicans were better with 8 percent saying improve, 25 percent saying get worse and 53 percent saying stay the same.
There was a major gender gap on this question. Among men, 6 percent said improve, 29 percent said get worse and 50 percent said stay the same. But among women, 9 percent said improve, 40 percent said get worse and 42 percent said stay the same.
The gender gap also showed up most notably among Democrats and independents.
Among independent men, 9 percent said improve, 27 percent said get worse and 53 percent said stay the same compared to a 5-45-38 split among independent women. Among Democratic men, 5 percent said improve, 40 percent said get worse and 45 percent said stay the same compared to an 11-49-34 split among Democratic women.
The differences in opinion among age were significant, with perceptions of how the financial condition has affected the local public school district improving as voters got older.
Among those 18-34, 4 percent said financial conditions had caused the quality of their local school district to improve, 44 percent said get worse and 37 percent said stay the same. Among those 35-49, the 11 percent said improve, 39 percent said get worse and 42 percent said stay the same. The split for those 50-64 was 5-39-48 and among those 65 and older was 10-21-51.
Ten percent of those surveyed said they are African-American. The partisan breakdown was 40.8 percent Democrat, 37.2 percent Republican and 20 percent independent.
This story was provided by Gongwer News Service. To subscribe, click on Gongwer.Com
