In 2016 and 2018, Washington voters rejected ballot initiatives that would have imposed carbon taxes. (Here are our policy briefs on I-732 and I-1631.) The 2016 version aimed to be revenue neutral, while the 2018 version would have increased state revenues.

Howard Gleckman of the Tax Policy Center points to a new study that considers what these rejections mean for carbon taxes in the United States.

Some points from the study:

• “[V]oters on average are not convinced that a revenue-neutral carbon tax will compensate them for higher energy prices—and do not much value the spending in the green-spending version of the carbon tax. Thus, for the average voter, tax incidence explains most of the opposition to the carbon tax.”
• Survey responses “likely overstate actual votes for a carbon tax in a real-world election.” Indeed, the study finds, support for I-1631 in Washington was 20 percentage points lower than in other states, even as there was no gap between Washington and these other states on other environmental policies. The authors figure that the lack of support in Washington for a carbon tax came down to being exposed to extra information (campaigns on both sides of the issue), status-quo bias, and campaign spending.
• Given the observed reduction in support when the issue came up for a vote in Washington, the study considers how other states might vote on a carbon tax: “Across all states, we find that our survey over-estimates support for a carbon tax relative to our forecasts based on Washington’s actual vote.” It estimates that a tax like the one in I-1631 could get 49.1 percent support in Massachusetts and a tax like the one in I-732 could get 46.5 percent in California. The only state in which a carbon tax would pass is Vermont, but they don’t have ballot initiatives.