A new poll conducted among likely GOP voters in the Nashville suburbs of Brentwood and Franklin by Triton Polling shows that voter concerns about traffic congestion, illegal immigration and rising crime are at the top of the list. Recent school shootings have also resulted in over 90% of the Republican voters in the District supporting placement of School Resource Officers (SROs) in each school across the state in order to increase security in our schools. The survey of 361 likely Republican Primary voters was conducted June 18-22, 2018 and has a margin or error of 5.1%.
“School shootings across the country are clearly top of mind among parents in Tennessee,” Tennessee Star Political Editor Steve Gill pointed out. “Currently only about half of Tennessee schools have an armed SRO, and 90.5% of the voters in this district support making sure that every school has that protection.” 65.3% of those polled supported state funding to ensure that level of protection of schools. Governor Bill Haslam included some funding for SROs in his final state budget, and several candidates for Governor, including Beth Harwell and Randy Boyd have expressed support for the Governor’s plan and that they intend to expand upon it.
When voters were asked to identify the most important issue in their community “traffic and congestion” was selected by 38.4%, followed by “illegal immigration” 19.1%, “quality of schools” 9.4%, and “rising crime/violence” 9.0%. The second most important issues were “traffic and congestion” 20.6%, “rising crime and violence” 17.6%, “quality of schools” 14.1% and “illegal immigration” 13.8%.
Other options in both questions were “creating more and better jobs”, “affordable housing”, “high property and sales taxes”, and “environmental issues”.
“Not surprisingly,” Gill noted, “traffic and congestion ranked number one among voter concerns, but the fact that rising crime and violence ranked so highly is a reflection of the recent rise in violent gun crimes in Nashville that seem to be bleeding into the Brentwood and Franklin area. Security concerns are clearly not limited to our schools.”
In the upcoming weeks, The Tennessee Star will be releasing other polls from legislative districts across the state and a statewide GOP Primary survey of likely voters in the August 2 Primary. The complete top line survey for the 61st House district is embedded below.
Triton - Tennessee HD61 Survey - Topline Results
