AZ Marijuana Arizona Marijuana Info
A phone poll conducted by OH Predictive Insights in February found that 52% of the Arizona respondents favor legalizing adult-use marijuana in the state. Showing opposition were 41% and 7% were undecided.
The poll contacted 600 Arizona voters, KTAR News reports. Support is up 13% from the June 2016 poll. Democratic voters showed more support than Republicans.
We polled this “three years ago when it was on the ballot in 2016 and we correctly predicted that it would lose,” said senior data analyst Noah Rudnick. “This is the first time we’ve polled that over 50 percent of people are in support of marijuana legalization, which is a big deal, especially as it looks like it’s going to be up for a vote again this cycle.”
Of those polled, 73% of Democrats support legalization and only 35% of Republicans. Independent voters showed 49% supporting legalization.
Rudnick said, “We saw a thing where last time when we polled this … Democrats weren’t as on board with it but Republicans were very much opposed to it. And this time you see it’s sort of flipped the other way — so now Democrats are very much in favor of it, even older Democrats are 70 percent in favor, and Republicans are seeing cracks.”
Wording may be what’s sparked the increase of support, according to Rudnick.
Rudnick said, “This time we specified whether it would be for adult use (instead of recreational). So I think a lot of that is how people perceive it. If you’re looking at, like, alcohol, a lot of people think ‘ah recreational, I’m worried about the kids’ … but if you specifically put adult use, it puts people’s minds at rest.”
Men support legalization by 57% and women are a bit lower showing 47% support. More women were opposed to legalization in 2016 than in the recent poll.
“The big opposition, it mostly comes from older Republicans, older independents, they’re still not as much on board although they are coming around,” Rudnick stated.
Rudnick is predicting that if marijuana legalization makes it to 2020 ballots, it should pass, and it could simply be because of the change in language from “recreational” to “adult use” legalization.
He continued by saying, “If the election were held today, and we’ve seen that it’s only been growing over time, it’s probably overwhelming likely to pass. It would be much more likely to pass than it would be to fail in 2020.”
