So... the Washington State Liquor Control Board gave $31,000 to Elway Research to determine how much we enjoy shopping at the state-run liquor stores. They got back the results of that poll, and—lift your glasses, Washington!—the state-run board announces that the state-run board is DOING AWESOME!!

Unfortunately, their report card is crap. Granted, it's not as disingenuous as the skewed messaging poll on the tunnel recently paid for by the state's transportation department ("Did you know the tunnel will improve the health of Puget Sound?"). But the "key findings" and fancy graphs that the state ballyhoos—the ones Goldy accepts as evidence that Washingtonians like buying Kirschwasser in a place that also feels like East Germany—are belied by results in the full report that paint a more sobering picture of customer satisfaction.

Let's start with a discrepancy that undermines one of the poll's key findings. (Keep in mind, the poll is plainly a response to last year's initiative battle over whether we should revoke the state's liquor retail monopoly. Now the state wants to prove it's doing swell and find out what it can do better.) Although the state announces that two-thirds of respondents said there were the "right number" of liquor stores, the full report presents a very different number when pollsters asked questions a different way: Customers want stores in more convenient locations (59 percent of customers said they want them embedded into grocery stores and other places), they want more time to get liquor (54 percent of customers said they want extended hours of operation), and they basically want liquor at the grocery store (61 percent of customers said wanted to buy other products, like ice and snacks, along with their booze).

But the state announces that "most non-customers opposed to every change." For fuck's sake, liquor board, really? You put stock for your business model in the whims of people who don't even use your business? Who are those non-customers? Turns out that 67 percent of those non-customers don't even consume alcoholic beverages. So, uh, THEY'RE NEVER GOING TO BE CUSTOMERS. There's no reason to poll them. Yet they make up most of the respondents: Elway Research surveyed 599 customers and 611 non-customers.

Here's what the survey never asks directly: Should grocery stores be allowed to sell liquor? If so, how? Last year's initiatives to allow liquor sales in grocery and convenience stores were too loosely written, true, but getting shot down on the ballot doesn't prove that Washington residents—particularly the people who actually purchase liquor—believe the state should monopolize retail sales. This poll doesn't prove that, either. And questions about customer satisfaction don't have much bearing here because, well, Washington residents don't have anything to compare it to.