Elephant Rumblings: A’s conduct poll asking Nevada residents about potential move

Welcome to Thursday, Athletics Nation!

Yesterday the results of a ‘poll’ were released to the public. The poll asked 700 Clark County (where Las Vegas is located) whether or not they support the A’s moving there. The results were about as expected: 61% of respondents expressed support for acquiring the team for their city while only 16% opposed the idea (14% were undecided).

There are a couple big caveats to that poll however: the poll was conducted before the announced change of stadium sight to the Tropicana Hotel. Would that change the poll drastically? Probably not.

The thing that honestly might have made a dent in support for the move is the omission of the use of taxpayer funds. That is a huge piece of information to leave out of something like this.

For example, The Nevada Independent ran their own poll similar to this one, but explicitly told respondents about the required use of taxpayers’ money. The results were much less shiny for John Fisher and co. as the public was much more split on the project after learning of that little tidbit.

The bottom line results aren’t encouraging for those of us who want the A’s to stay in Oakland but when you read between the lines it’s kind of clear that this was always going to be the result of the poll. Just ask Casey Pratt:

Don’t put too much stock into this right now. It’s likely a piece of information that the A’s lobbyists are going to use to try and sway Nevada’s lawmakers to get on board with forking over public funds. Fingers crossed they stand their ground and refuse to pay for anything.

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He’ll be up any day at this rate…