New Poll: Arizonans Oppose Race-Based Discrimination in Public Ed, Overwhelmingly Support HCR 2001

Arizona lawmakers can put the left’s race-based radicalism on a collision course with voters this November, and new statewide polling shows very clearly that they should.

Sponsored by State Rep. Steve Kaiser, HCR 2001 proposes to amend Arizona’s state constitution to prohibit public schools and universities from discriminating against students, teachers or staff on the basis of skin color or from screening out potential teacher candidates because they fail to support race-based political ideologies.

Having already cleared the state House of Representatives, HCR 2001 will—once greenlit by the state Senate—give voters the chance to ratify these new constitutional protections at the November election.

And these voters, it seems, stand ready to deliver a resounding victory.  New polling released this week from the September Group, finds 4 out of 5 Arizona voters agree that our public education institutions should be free of race-based policies.  Specifically, when asked, “Should Arizona public schools and universities give preferential treatment in hiring and admissions decisions to certain people based upon their race or skin color?”, 82% of voters rejected the idea.

Fortunately, this is precisely what HCR 2001 would protect students and teachers against. As the ballot measure reads: “This state may not under any circumstance disadvantage or treat differently on the basis of race or ethnicity any individual from among any pool of applicants, students, employees or contract recipients when making a hiring, contracting, promotion or admission decision.”

(n= 307. Statewide polling conducted May 2022 by September Group, LLC)

Perhaps even more significantly, the polling reveals that Arizona voters across the political spectrum support the provisions of HCR 2001, with 93% of Republicans, 85% of independents/other, and even 63% of Democrats agreeing that Arizona’s public educational institutions should not be treating individuals differently based upon skin color.

These figures also mirror nationwide polling from Pew Research Center released last month, which found that just 26% of Americans believe that race or ethnicity should influence college admissions decisions, compared to the 74% of Americans who believe race or ethnicity should have zero impact on how applicants are treated.  Other national polls, such Ipsos’ 2021 survey of U.S. adults, have likewise found that only 27% of respondents believe the government “should favor hiring certain racial and ethnic groups if doing so will create more equity.”

Even in deep blue California as recently as 2020, voters defeated—by double digits—a leftwing attempt to repeal the state’s ban on racial discrimination in hiring and admissions decisions in public education. So it should be no surprise to find Arizona voters rejecting race-based protocols even more emphatically.

The new polling has also found that voters overwhelmingly support HCR 2001’s protections against political tests being used to screen out candidates from the classroom.  Public schools and universities are increasingly demandingthat job applicants identify their support for “diversity, equity, and inclusion” initiatives—requirements that scholars note are functioning as thinly veiled ideological litmus tests and 1950s-style loyalty oaths to screen out insufficiently progressive teachers, regardless of their ability.

As the poll found, 88% of Arizona voters reject the notion that public schools should only hire teachers who support certain controversial political ideologies, rather than hiring teachers based on their teaching ability. Fortunately, HCR 2001 will ensure that the state constitution’s existing ban on political tests applies to these new race-based formulations as well.

Finally, the new polling also found that 78% of voters oppose the implementation of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in public education, with just 10% supporting its implementation and 12% who were unsure.

In short, Arizona voters—across the political spectrum—recognize the fundamental importance of state institutions treating all individuals equally regardless of race. Certain activists and ideologues may continue calling for racial discrimination under the euphemisms of CRT, diversity, or equity, but voters agree that regardless of how they’re framed, racially discriminatory policies have no place in Arizona or its constitution.