Nearly 70% of Mississippi voters favor creating a state lottery with a majority saying that lottery revenue should be devoted to public schools, according to a new Millsaps College-Chism Strategies State of the State Survey.
“The State of the State Survey finds that although voters are concerned about the state’s current direction, there are several clear-cut policy priorities that may help improve their perceptions of state government and the Legislature,” said Dr. Nathan R. Shrader, assistant professor of political science at Millsaps.
“These priorities include immense support for creating a state lottery and the need to address very tangible problems like infrastructure and the lack of accessible, affordable health care. In addition to these things, we learned from this survey that several key state officials such as Delbert Hosemann and Lynn Fitch are quite popular with the voters and should be taken seriously as potential candidates for higher office.”
Responses about road and bridge repairs revealed contradictions. While nearly a quarter of all respondents ranked infrastructure improvements as their top policy priority, just 38% favor increasing the state’s gasoline tax to finance the repairs. Only 29% of voters believe that lottery revenue should be directed to fixing roads and bridges compared to 51% who believe this money should go towards funding public education.
The State of the State Survey involves a partnership between the Millsaps College Political Science Department, the Institute for Civic and Professional Engagement at Millsaps and Chism Strategies. The survey was conducted Dec. 15-19, 2017. Sample size was 578 with 29% cell phone interviews. Margin of error was 4.08%. Results were weighted to reflect 2015 general election turnout for age, race, gender and partisanship.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
- Look for the "Republish This Story" button underneath each story. To republish online, simply click the button, copy the html code and paste into your Content Management System (CMS).
- Editorial cartoons and photo essays are not included under the Creative Commons license and therefore do not have the "Republish This Story" button option. To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.
- You have to credit Mississippi Today. We prefer “Author Name, Mississippi Today” in the byline. If you’re not able to add the byline, please include a line at the top of the story that reads: “This story was originally published by Mississippi Today” and include our website, mississippitoday.org.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You cannot republish our editorial cartoons, photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission (contact our managing editor Kayleigh Skinner for more information). To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- Our stories may appear on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- You can only publish select stories individually — not as a collection.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.