PennLive.com, the online presence of the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania-area newspaper, The Patriot-News, reported Wednesday morning that a new poll reveals that Pennsylvanians are in favor of online gaming legalization.
The poll was conducted last week by Harrisburg lobbying and PR firm The Bravo Group and covered responses provided by 769 of the state’s registered voters. The exact questions as presented to respondents have not been published, but PennLive.com provided the breakdown of some of the more interesting results. The most telling statistic: 58 percent of those polled said that they would support a law that both licenses and “strictly regulates” online gambling in Pennsylvania. That’s not an overwhelming majority in favor of internet gambling, including poker, but it’s certainly better than 58 percent against.
66 percent of respondents said that they want online gambling taxed “so the money can be used for education and other vital state programs. People are also in favor of player protections: unsurprisingly, 80 percent would want gaming sites to be required to have technology in place to keep children out, though barely more than half – 52 percent – are in favor of requiring companies to employ systems to set deposit limits, loss limits, and playing time in order to aid problem gamblers. 52 percent of those polled said they would want the policing of gaming sites to be by law enforcement officials (so…policing by the police, I suppose).
Then, summing it all up, 61 percent of those polled would be “more likely” to vote for a candidate “who in one bill votes to protect children from gambling online, generates millions of dollars for vital state programs, and gives law enforcement the power to stop fraud and cheating of offshore gambling websites.”
Looks good. But before we go patting ourselves on the back and shout from the mountain top that THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN, keep in mind that polls are designed to produce the results that those who commission them want. The Bravo Group has no information about this poll on its website, but it describes itself as taking “a campaign-style approach to advocacy and public relations.”
“Our difference lies in our integrated campaign-style approach, where our professionals on the ground have access to a full range of tactics to match smart strategies with the experience necessary to win,” the site says.
At this time, we don’t know exactly who commission this poll, but it looks like it was someone in the pro-online gambling camp, perhaps one of the legislators who currently has a bill on the table in the Commonwealth. It does seem that the poll questions were structured to steer answers in one direction, which while lame, is completely standard operating practice.
Contrast that with the poll from about a month ago, conducted by Harper Polling, an outfit well-known to do polling for Republican interests. Sheldon Adelson’s Coalition to Stop Internet Gambling jumped all over this one (and likely commissioned it), as it seemed to show that Pennsylvanians were against online gambling. It was pretty overwhelming, too: 73 percent were opposed to the pastime. Just over half were “more likely” to vote against a candidate who is in favor of online gambling.
But again, those who conduct the polls can format the questions in such a way so as to coax the “tight” answers out of the respondents. We don’t know exactly how the questions were phrased, as that hasn’t made public, but neither have they in the Bravo Group poll.
