A heavily bankrolled, seven-month public-relations blitzkrieg on behalf of the proposed $2 billion casino-entertainment complex near the Loop has failed to sway Illinois voters to support the plan, according to a Tribune poll.
Statewide, nearly half of all respondents-48 percent-said they opposed the proposal, while 32 percent said they favored it. The remaining 20 percent had no opinion.
The strongest opposition was found in the northern half of the state outside of the Chicago metropolitan region, where opponents outnumbered supporters by more than 2 to 1.
That area includes Peoria and Rock Island, which have received windfall tax benefits from fledgling riverboat casinos that probably would be hard hit if a huge casino complex were built in Chicago.
Pro-casino forces contended that the Tribune poll wasn`t a good measure of sentiment about the proposal because it included only one question about the casino. All other questions had to do with political campaigns.
They argued that a better measure of sentiment was a poll of 804 registered voters conducted Sept. 17-19 on behalf of the complex`s sponsors that showed strong support for the plan once details of the proposal and its expected benefits were explained to respondents.
”We don`t feel that a single question in an unrelated poll measures public opinion on this $2 billion private investment that will benefit the entire state of Illinois,” said Bill Utter, a spokesman for the three casino companies sponsoring the complex.
”Without a description of the project, including the jobs and other tax benefits, we don`t feel there`s any validity to the results.”
The Tribune poll, conducted by telephone Oct. 3-4 by Market Shares Corp. of Mt. Prospect, surveyed 1,064 registered voters. The potential error margin for the survey is 3 percentage points and is higher for subgroups within the statewide sample.
The question regarding the casino plan was: ”There is a proposal to build gambling casinos in Chicago. Do you favor or oppose this proposal?”
Since the casino complex was first proposed March 24 by representatives of Circus Circus Enterprises Inc., Caesars World Inc. and the gaming division of Hilton Hotels Corp., it has been the subject of hundreds of newspaper, magazine, radio and television reports.
It also has been the subject of a full-throttle publicity campaign spearheaded by Mayor Richard Daley, who has held news conference after news conference to trumpet the plan as an economic development and jobs bonanza.
And Daley has been seconded by high-powered consultants, clout-heavy lobbyists and public-relations specialists, funded by the three casino companies, which have been on the attack almost daily with announcements, press releases and ads in the major Chicago newspapers.
Almost weekly, agents for the project have produced a slick, four-page, full-color, large-format newsletter on the plan called ”The Magnet.”
Yet, the project has failed to catch fire with the public, even in Chicago.
The Tribune poll indicated that there appears to be at least as many opponents as supporters in the city, even though Chicagoans and city businesses are the ones most likely to benefit from the complex.
In fact, a greater number of Chicago respondents said they opposed the plan. But because of the relatively small size of the Chicago sample and the relatively high margin of error, all that can be said with certainty is that there is a split among city residents on the issue.
The same seems to be true among Daley`s fellow Democrats in Illinois, who appear to be evenly split on the proposal.
The story`s much different for Republicans. They`re 2 to 1 against the proposal, with 56 percent opposed and 25 percent in favor, according to the Tribune poll.
Reacting to the Tribune poll, Mike Lawrence, the press secretary of Gov. Jim Edgar, a staunch opponent of the casino proposal, said: ”Gov. Edgar has not based his opposition to the land-based casino project in Chicago on any poll. But this poll shows how cooked the polls by the casino sponsors have been.”
Daley`s press secretary, Jim Williams, disagreed. He contended the Tribune poll`s casino question failed to note that, according to estimates from Daley`s Gaming Commission, the project would create 37,000 permanent jobs and $500 million in new tax revenue and that 80 percent of the complex would be devoted to non-gambling activity, such as a theme park.
”People are just not seeing the whole picture,” he said. ”If you put all of that information into the question, you might get a different result.” And that`s what the pro-casino forces got with their poll last month when they asked a lengthy series of questions that, step-by-step, informed respondents about the casino proposal, including the theme park.
Like the Tribune poll, the one conducted for the pro-casino forces last month by the Washington-based Garin-Hart Strategic Research Group included several questions about political races.
The questionnaire concluded: ”Thinking back on everything we have discussed, what is your reaction to the proposal to build the theme park and casino center in Chicago?”
In response, 57 percent were in favor and 31 percent against.
Geoff Garin, who oversaw the poll for the casino sponsors, said that the Tribune question ”measures what I think is an abstract proposal. It does not deal with a specific project with specific benefits. When you ask people about this specific project and its specific benefits, you get much more favorable results.”
Utter noted that a mail survey conducted in June by a University of Illinois at Chicago professor on behalf of the Chicago Crime Commission, a strong opponent of the plan, found that 47 percent of its respondents favored the initiation of casino gambling in Chicago, while 43 percent were opposed.
