Published Monday, September 27, 2004 Poll shows cyanide ban still favored HELENA - Montana voters remain slightly more supportive of maintaining a 1998 ban on cyanide leach gold and silver mining than in repealing it, a new Gazette State Poll shows. By a 43 percent to 36 percent margin, voters say they would reject Initiative 147, which would repeal the current ban on cyanide leach mining, require some environmental safeguards not mandatory before the ban went into effect and restore mining rights that have since expired. Twenty-one percent were undecided. The poll, a telephone survey of 625 likely Montana voters, was conducted between Sept. 20-22 by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points. Forty-five percent of women voters oppose I-147, while 32 percent favor it, with 23 percent undecided. Among male voters, 41 percent oppose it, while 40 percent support it with 19 percent undecided. Canyon Resources Corp., of Golden, Colo., has been the major benefactor behind the effort, hiring the woman who wrote the initiative and giving $1.3 million in in-kind donations to the effort or about 96 percent of all the money supporters of the initiative have raised. Canyon had hoped to build a large cyanide leach gold mine near Lincoln when Montana voters approved the cyanide ban in 1998 by a 52 to 48 percent margin. Some of the company's mining leases have since expired, but I-147 would reinstate them if the initiative passes. The company has been suing the state over the ban since shortly after its passage. Support against the ban has not changed since late May, when the last Gazette State Poll was conducted. At that time, 43 percent supported keeping the ban, 38 percent opposed it and 19 percent were undecided. In another ballot issue, Montanans surveyed overwhelmingly support changing the state's constitution to enshrine the right of Montanan's to hunt and fish. According to the poll, 53 percent of those surveyed said they would support the change, called Constitutional Amendment 41. Only 14 percent were against the change, and 33 percent were undecided. The amendment garnered about equal support among men and women. |