Two days before politicians reconvene to discuss the future of Senator Adam Gray’s Californian online poker bill, a survey organised by the opposition reveals that 52% of those polled don’t want online poker in the state.
After Tony G offered to bet the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) leader, Nigel Farage, £1m to prove that the United Kingdom would remain a part of the European Union (EU) in the wake of Thursday’s EU Referendum, the Lithuanian asserted that the odds lines are a more accurate indicator of public opinion than the polls.
If that’s the case, the online poker community will welcome some odds lines on online poker’s chances of emerging from the chrysalis as a fully regulated and licensed market in California.
We don’t have odds, but we do have polls, and a coalition of Californian American Indian Tribes who ardently oppose legalisation of online poker has financed the latest bit of data crunching.
According to Dave Palermo, over at OnlinePokerReport, 52% of the 1,500 Californians polled said they didn’t want a regulated and licensed online poker market in their state.
The survey results, organised by Fairbank, Maslin, Maulin, Metz & Associates (FM3), were revealed on Monday. Also, a whopping 74% of those asked to partake in the poll believe ‘bad actors’ should not receive a license to operate in the state should they legalised it in due course. FM3 has been working in the field of public research since 1981.
So, a survey organised by a faction that doesn’t want online poker legalised in the state shows that Californians agree with them. That’s interesting, let’s see how that plays out.
In June 2010, Tulchin Research conducted a poll that revealed 66% of those questioned favoured a regulated and licensed online poker market in the state. Two years later, the same research group went back to their audience and found that 76% supported the same legislation; 64% wanted the online poker rooms to be Californian based, and 56% wanted online gambling to be restricted to poker only.
Who were behind the surveys?
The California Online Poker Association (COPA), a group of Indian Tribes and poker rooms who support legalisation of poker in California.
In May 2015, ALL In Media House, a supporter of online poker regulation, commissioned National Research Institute and Survata Inc. to poll 1,500 registered California voters aged 21. 66% wanted a fully regulated online poker market. and 85% said they would not feel safe playing on an unregulated site.
I think that tells you to take these things with a pinch of salt.
The Californian Assembly Appropriations Committee are scheduled to reconvene on Senator Adam Gray’s AB 2863 bill at 9 am, Wednesday 22 June, where combatants from both sides will throw a series of punches around the faces of taxation, ‘bad actors’, and legalisation in general.
