One of the defining features of LA’s bid for the 2024 Olympic Games (and ultimate acceptance of the 2028 Olympics) was a lack of public fanfare. As we were forming our coalition and doing outreach in various communities, many people had no idea that an Olympic bid was on the table. While other cities saw residents celebrating in the street after the IOC selected them to host the Games, the steps of City Hall were empty on the day that Eric Garcetti and City Council held a press conference announcing their vote to sign the Host City Contract. Despite this ghostly reception, Garcetti, the bid committee, and boosters throughout the city still insisted that the overwhelming majority of Angelenos want the Games, as evidenced by a 2016 poll and 2017 survey – both conducted by LMU and commissioned by the bid committee.
As sentient political beings in the year 2018, we do not share the bid committee’s unwavering confidence around any kind of polling data. But it’s especially egregious to claim that one poll and one survey are sufficient research for something with as wide-ranging impact as hosting the Olympics. Other cities with bids in play saw frequent, consistent polling and surveying from local media and academic institutions to gauge public support – for example, WBUR in Boston conducted opinion polls nearly every month in the two years that the city had an active bid and continued to poll for a year after the bid was dropped. LA media has not conducted a single poll or survey, by contrast.
So last year, we raised money to conduct our own online survey, which was completed in late September. The results paint a very different picture than the one claimed by boosters and reflect a reality much closer to what we’ve observed from talking to actual Angelenos. Our survey had over 1000 respondents across the state of California, with about 35% from LA County, and these were our key findings:
- There is no popular demand or widespread, strong support for bringing the 2028 Olympic Games to Los Angeles. 47% of respondents across California (and 45% in LA County) opposed bringing the Games to Los Angeles with 26% in support. Only 9% of respondents strongly supported bringing the Games to Los Angeles – about a third of the number of people who were strongly opposed (26%) or neutral (27%). Within LA County, nearly twice as many people were neutral (24%) as those who strongly supported bringing the Olympics to Los Angeles (13%). LMU’s survey instrument notably did not include an option for people to identify as “neutral” about the 2024 or 2028 Games, which is known as a forced choice. We think it’s important to measure, since passive or weak support does not equal broad, popular demand.
- There is substantial reason to believe that weak support is closely connected to lack of awareness, and with more information, a significant number of Angelenos and Californians will actively oppose bringing the Games to LA. 36% of respondents said that learning more about LA’s bid worsened their opinion of the Olympics. By comparison, 12% of people said learning more improved their opinion. From cities that have conducted more rigorous (or any) polling, we’ve seen this trend in effect – polling numbers drop when respondents are informed about key aspects of the bid, such as the taxpayer guarantee.
- Most people lack basic awareness of the bid and bidding process. Only 1% of respondents said that they had been following LA’s Olympic bid very closely, whereas over half (54%) were not following closely at all. 68% were unaware of how many cities had dropped their bids for 2024 (8% were unsure if they were aware, 24% were aware). This is incredibly important context to glean and report on around public opinion.
- Many people recognized and expressed concern not only about the Games’ impact on the city but also on their own lives – particularly when it came to housing, homelessness, and displacement. 35% of respondents believed that bringing the Games to LA will worsen their own lives. Open responses often tied this to issues around displacement, for example: “Some will get rich on renting property out others will lose money because they’ll have to relocate.” When asked directly, 43% of respondents were moderately or extremely concerned about the impact of the Olympics on raising rents in LA and 51% of respondents were moderately or extremely concerned about the impact of the Olympics on LA’s homelessness crisis
We see this survey as a continuation of our goal to create more meaningful, democratic dialogue around the Olympics – dialogue which we believe is sorely needed in Los Angeles and that has not yet taken place. Without that dialogue, the decision to host the Olympics in LA will continue to be one that is made exclusively by the wealthy and powerful, without the input of the people whose lives will be irrevocably harmed or even destroyed. To be clear, we do not believe that any poll or survey (including ours) is a substitute for real dialogue about how these Games will impact the most vulnerable and marginalized people in our city.
We reject LA2028 and other boosters’ ongoing claim that a single polling figure from 2016 could ever serve as a rationale for not informing Angelenos and listening to their concerns. Elected leaders and boosters have been doing everything in their power to silence dissent around the Games and paint any critique as “fringe,” and they’ve consistently used this single polling figure as a shield for that. Basically, their line of reasoning has been “the opposition makes some valid points, but they represent a minority of Angelenos, and we know this because of a single poll from 2016, and therefore we don’t have to make additional space for public input.” Our overall goal is to make that argument moot on every level and our hope is that this survey will chip away at the third piece, opening the door for more dialogue across the board.
We don’t need a poll or survey to tell us that people are scared and angry and disenfranchised when it comes to the mega-wealthy and powerful making decisions of this scale on their behalf, or that there’s no popular mandate for hosting the Olympics in LA, or that a vast number of Angelenos have deep concerns about the impact of hosting the Games on their lives and on the city, but maybe this data can help illustrate those points for people who haven’t had a chance to see any of this with their own eyes, or for those in power who prefer to listen to numbers over people.
And more important than proving a point or starting a conversation with those who currently hold decision-making power in our city, we hope this creates an opportunity for Angelenos to talk to each other – not just about why bringing the Olympics to LA is a terrible idea, but about what it would look like to build a city for ourselves that would never be amenable to this wasteful, destructive event.
Here is the link to the open survey, our raw data, and the survey dictionary. And here is where you can see our full data questionnaire and links.
Please contact us with any questions. More details about our methodology below.
The margin of error is +/-3.1%. For reference, the LMU survey from 2017 was +/-4%.
We purchased respondents through SurveyMonkey Audience, setting the parameters at 1,000 respondents across the state of California. We didn’t do any pre-selection for demographics beyond that due to cost implications. In the end, 35% of the respondents were based in LA County, 65% were not.
Note to editors and journalists: there have been two other research projects regarding the LA 2024 bid, one by StudyLA, the other by the IOC, and only one for LA 2028. The latter of which was discredited by the LMU team, incidentally. When reporting on the issue, please make the accurate distinction that – prior to our survey – there was only one poll regarding LA 2028.
**Update: in 2019, we learned that Fernando Guerra, who was running the LMU polling, was a registered lobbyist for a firm representing Olympic hotel developers, which further discredits their work. Full details here.