Texas Tech Political Science Survey Polls Lubbockites on Views of Lubbock Power and Light, Other Issues

Some Texas Tech students polled Lubbockites for their thoughts on Lubbock Power and Light, taxes, and their satisfaction with city services.

For a public opinion course assignment in Tech Political Science Associate Professor Gregg Murray’s class, students conducted a scientific telephone survey of 217 people in Lubbock County.

Students found that 71 percent of people surveyed said LP&L pricing was fair or poor, while only three percent considered it good or excellent.

According to the survey, 59 percent of people polled said that if they had to choose between increasing taxes or reducing services, they are willing to pay higher taxes to maintain the current level of services.

“The purpose of the survey was to give our students experience with the nuts and bolts of public opinion surveys so they have a better understanding when they see them reported in the news,” said Murray.

“We also wanted to give back to Lubbock by providing information to the community about people’s satisfaction with local government services, and with a few exceptions, people seem pretty satisfied,” Murray continued.

Murray’s students were assigned 12 hours of surveying in Tech’s Earl Survey Research Laboratory. Students from a judicial process class taught by Associate Professor Mark McKenzie also participated.

ESRL is a research facility housed in Tech’s Department of Political Science.

Adults 18 years and older in Lubbock County were interviewed from October 15^th through November 4^th, resulting in 217 completed surveys with a margin of error of +/- 8.8 percent.

Murray discussed the margin of error, saying “This is the result of only having a little more than 200 completed surveys. The margin of error goes down as the number of completed surveys goes up. Despite this margin of error, a number of the results are still statistically meaningful.”

More of the survey’s findings are included below.

• Twenty-three percent approve of the way President Barack Obama is handling his job as president, while 51 percent approve of the way Texas Governor Rick Perry is handling his.

• Eighty-six percent rate the overall quality of life in Lubbock as good to excellent.

• Seventy-two percent feel safe from violent crime and 66 percent feel the same about property crime in Lubbock.

• Three out of four people (76 percent) think the quality of Lubbock ISD education is good to excellent while almost half (47 percent) believe public education in Lubbock does not receive enough funding to meet the learning needs of students.

• Out of 11 city services that were rated, fire services and ambulance/EMS were rated the highest, with more than 90 percent rating them as good to excellent, while street repair and code enforcement were rated the lowest, with only 52 percent and 33 percent giving them the same quality rankings.