By Danny Westneat
The Seattle Times
(TNS)
People in Washington have famously said no to a state income tax the past 10 times they’ve voted on it.
The rejections were hardly mild. Since 1970, the closest the pro-tax side has come to a win was in 2010, when they lost by such a wide margin—28 points—that it effectively made the idea radioactive.
So the latest independent poll of the state sure contains some surprises.
For starters, 61% of Washingtonians back the idea of a 9.9% tax on incomes greater than $1 million, versus just 29% opposed, according to a poll from Northwest-based DHM Research. The poll question mirrors a “millionaires tax” proposal being introduced this legislative session by state Senate Majority Leader Jamie Pedersen, D-Seattle, and backed by Gov. Bob Ferguson.
But where the support comes from is more eye-opening. It’s coming from … everywhere. Including from self-identified Republicans.
“There is majority backing for the tax across all parties: 71% percent of Democrats, 54% of Republicans, and 52% of Independents or other (third-party) voters support it,” said DHM researchers.
The poll had a margin of error of 4.4 percentage points and was conducted at the end of November. It was part of the firm’s regular survey of Washington and had no sponsors or clients, DHM said.
It found that Republicans back the millionaires tax by 54%-40%.
“Yep,” said Pedersen, when I told him about it. “That’s what our internal polling has been showing, too.”
What is going on? Has the public turned around on this once toxic idea that much?
It’s conceivable—though this is only a poll. Campaigners have learned the hard way that polls are not the same as votes. The 2010 initiative to tax high earners also polled well, until suddenly it didn’t. It got creamed on Election Day because voters over time came to doubt the tax would stay only on the rich, its backers acknowledge.
But there have been some big earthquakes in politics since then.
One is the state got a lot bluer. That wouldn’t explain why even Republicans now are more open to taxing the rich, though.
But another is that the bases of the parties have shifted. Lower-income and working-class voters have been tilting toward the GOP in recent years, a populist shake-up. If Republicans are now seen as the antielite party, well then maybe the party’s base wouldn’t mind going ahead and taxing those elites, too?
“We’ve had this shift of working-class people becoming more conscious of how the economic system and the tax system is stacked against them,” Pedersen said. “A lot of those voters are conservative, living in our Eastern Washington counties. There’s no doubt they are becoming more open to it.”
It’s already happened once. In the 2024 vote on a capital-gains tax, 14 of Eastern Washington’s 20 counties, including some of the redder places in the state, voted to retain that tax on the rich.
This could be rational voting behavior for another reason. Most of the state’s superwealthy are concentrated in King County, so taxing the rich could be seen as another way to stick it to Seattle.
It’s also possible that President Donald Trump’s tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, pushed through last summer alongside cuts to health care, have irked working stiffs in both parties.
DHM found that taxing super-high incomes is popular across every demographic—young and old, rural and urban, the college-educated and not, plus the bottom end of the earnings range (making less than $50,000) all the way to the reasonably well-off (making more than $150,000). They did not ask million-dollar-earners for their views. (They make up less than half a percent of the state, so they’d be tricky to poll.)
The poll results weren’t particularly slanted toward progressive viewpoints. DHM also asked about the Democratic idea of raising the annual limit on property taxes from 1% to 3%, and the response to that was emphatically “no.” It was rejected by 27%-64%.
The poll did make clear though that people do not want to pay any income tax themselves. DHM asked whether you’d be open to an income tax if it had a lower rate than 9.9%, but applied to incomes of $100,000 or above, rather than starting at $1 million. The bottom dropped out.
“Only 36% maintained their backing for the proposal,” DHM noted. Democrats completely reversed, dropping to minus 20 points compared with plus 53 points on taxing millionaires. Republicans also dropped to minus 21 points. So basically everyone hated it.
“Don’t tax you, don’t tax me, tax that fellow behind the tree” is a political saying that’s now nearing a century old. Still true, though. Especially, in 2026, if behind the tree is someone with a mother lode of stock options.
Photo credit: Kirk Fisher/iStock
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© 2026 The Seattle Times. Visit www.seattletimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency LLC.
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