A post-election poll commissioned by two unions, SEIU 775 and UFCW 21, the Civic Alliance for a Progressive Economy, a political action committee, echoes what voters appeared to be telling us last week: the people of Seattle overwhelmingly support taxing big business and the wealthy "to pay for vital services."

Here's the memo. Here's the poll with crosstabs but apparently not with all the questions.

According to the poll, 75 percent of respondents support the council passing a law that "raises local taxes on big businesses and the wealthy to help pay for vital services." More than half of those people "strongly" back the idea.

Support for such taxes was greatest in District 4, which covers the University of Washington and surrounding neighborhoods. In that district, 84 percent of respondents say they like the idea. The weakest support is in North Seattle's District 5, according to the poll, with ~only~ 64 percent approval.

The results in both districts indicate big majorities supporting taxes on big business and the wealthy, though that District 4 number seems like cold comfort for Shaun Scott, the Democratic Socialist who lost his D4 race against capitalist and former Tim Burgess aide Alex Pedersen by 5 points. If Pedersen wants to remain in that seat, he should take heed.

Patinkin Research Strategies conducted the telephone/cell phone poll of 400 people between Nov 7 and 10, surveying only registered voters who cast a ballot in the 2019 general election. It looks like they got a roughly even number of responses from voters in all seven districts, with D2 a little underrepresented. The poll has a 4.9 percent margin of error.

These numbers show a greater enthusiasm among Seattle voters for taxing big business than a somewhat similar Crosscut/Elway poll found in October. That poll showed that "56 percent of Seattle voters still support at least the idea of a tax on large businesses to fund affordable housing."

Other fun takeaways: the "Amazon backlash" was a real thing.

In an e-mail, consultant Heather Weiner noted that before pollsters reminded voters that Amazon had dumped a lot of money into Seattle's city council races, the company was seen favorably by 42 percent of the poll's respondents and unfavorably by only 24 percent.

After the reminder ("As you may know, in the weeks leading up to this past Tuesday's election, Amazon and other large corporations spent nearly four million dollars to help boost a slate of more business-friendly candidates for the Seattle City Council...") Amazon's favorability rating dropped to 34 percent, with more respondents—39 percent—giving the company an unfavorable rating.

Finally, 53 percent of respondents think "big businesses like Amazon" have "too much" influence in Seattle politics. Interestingly, the youths (people between 18-29) were the most likely of any age group to say that Amazon has the "right amount" or "too little" influence. But: it was 45.5 percent of people age 18 -29 who expressed these views to the pollsters—meaning a majority of the youths think otherwise.

Last year, some members of the city council decided to repeal the head tax after looking at polls showing the tax doing poorly. After taking a look at this one, the new group should now feel more than confident in their efforts to pursue progressive taxes on big business to help fund homelessness services, affordable housing, and—now that Eyman's initiative has blown holes in budgets all over Washington—transportation.