MPG President Steve Koczela testifies on voter support for Assisted Outpatient Treatment (AOT)
MPG President Steve Koczela testified before the Massachusetts State Legislature Joint Committee on the Judiciary a poll MPG conducted on Assisted Outpatient Treatment for mental health. This poll was sponsored by AOT Now. Below is his prepared testimony to the committee.
Good afternoon chairs and members of the committee. I am Steve Koczela and I am the President of The MassINC Polling Group. I am here speaking about S.980 and H.1694 (An Act to provide critical community health services), and a poll we recently conducted on assisted outpatient treatment.
The survey was conducted among a sample of 500 registered voters here in Massachusetts in mid-July of this year.
The main finding of this survey is that support for the proposed policy is broad and is not polarized by party or other demographics. The survey found 75% of registered voters said they would favor the AOT policy the poll described, while 14% opposed it.
Notably, the survey did not find large gaps between demographic or partisan groups in terms of support or opposition to the policy. At this stage, this has not become a partisan issue, where one side strongly favors the policy and the other strongly opposes it. Instead, the survey found 78% of Democrats, and 66% of Republicans supported the AOT policy.
In addition to overall support questions, the survey included a series of questions asking about support or opposition to overall concepts related to AOT. In all, 85% strongly or somewhat agreed with the statement “Untreated serious mental illness is a serious problem in Massachusetts and should be a top priority for our state.” We regularly see mental health challenges come up in our polling as a key concern. This is not unique to this poll.
On a related note, when asked on an open ended basis why supporters are in favor of the AOT proposal, the number one reason was that mental health is a key issue with which everyone deserves help.
The second issue on the list was safety. On the issue of safety, 87% said they agree with the idea that “People suffering from serious mental illness should be required to receive treatment if they are likely to be a danger to themselves or others.”
When opponents were asked about their reasons for opposition, civil rights was the top issue. Though here, most voters do not see this as a civil rights issue.
In summary, support for AOT policies among Massachusetts voters is broad, with large majorities extending across demographic groups.
Thank you for your time. I would be glad to take your questions regarding the methods or findings of this poll.
About the poll
These results are based on a survey of 500 Massachusetts registered voters. Responses were collected via text messages and live interviews via landline and cells phones between July 18 and 23, 2023 using conventional registration-based sampling procedures. The sample was weighted by race, age and gender, education, geography, and political registration for registered voters in Massachusetts. The margin of error for this survey is +/- 4.4 percentage points for the entire sample, including the design effect. This poll was sponsored by AOT Now.