Football stadium?

Alex Seith, political commentator for the ABC television affiliate in Chicago, wanted to know the mood of the voters towards the construction of a new football stadium for Chicago, and in late August I conducted 618 interviews in a survey commissioned by Seith. Prior to the survey Mayor Richard M. Daley had said that he was opposed to the construction of a new stadium if tax dollars were needed to build it. At the same time the mayor said that if Chicago had an additional NFL team besides the Bears, then the two teams could share the cost of a new stadium and no tax dollars would be needed.

My firm designed four questions for the survey; 300 interviews were conducted in suburban Cook County and 318 in Chicago. The questions and results are in the box.

The results of question one were not surprising. Most people in the area are against spending additional tax dollars on anything. In question two, the fact that over half the voters expressed a preference for having an additional professional football team in Chicago indicated that another team has the potential for building a following.

When explained in question three that benefits from a second football team extend beyond satisfying sports fans and include the potential for building a new stadium without tax dollars, over three-quarters of those surveyed favored construction of a new stadium.

Responses to the first three questions lead to the obvious conclusion: People do

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not want to pay for a stadium, but if another team could be brought in to help pay for it, fine. The results of question four indicate a stronger motivation than entertainment for the overwhelming support for a "tax-free" stadium, namely, find other ways than raising taxes to generate revenue for Chicago and Cook County. One Chicago woman may have summed it up best: "Hopefully, if they [the politicians] get money from that [the stadium], they won't be coming after us [the taxpayers] as soon for more money."

An interesting aspect of this attitude is reflected in the male and female responses. Considering the large increase in recent years in single-family households headed by women, female respondents have become a much more sensitive barometer to economic conditions than men. In question one, 34 percent of the men and only 19 percent of the women wanted tax dollars used to build a stadium. In question four, 68 percent of the men and 75 percent of the women thought a stadium would generate revenue. Women want no new taxes and responded more favorably to alternative ways of raising revenue. Comparing men's responses to questions three and four, 77 percent of them were for a new stadium while only 68 percent believed it would generate revenue. Among women there is only a one-point difference: 74 percent were for the stadium, 75 percent thought it would generate revenue. The most interesting general result of this poll is its reflection of a change in attitude that we are tracking in other research: that voters are much more willing to support alternate ways of generating revenue for government than they have been in the past. Four years ago support for a new "tax-free" stadium would probably have been less than 50 percent. Then, people chiefly believed that in any project like this, tax dollars would be spent, and the project would be used as a hidden way of spending more tax dollars. Today, with the onslaught of tax increases at the state and local level, people believe that if new ways to generate revenue are not found, taxes will continue to increase. They are, therefore, more willing to risk the chance of a few tax dollars being spent on a "tax-free" stadium than do nothing and face more tax increases.

Michael McKeon is head of McKeon and Associates, a national polling organization.

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