Husser offers insights on Amazon HQ2, economic incentives for New York Times article

The article for the New York Times UpShot section focuses on the lengths that cities go to when trying to land large economic development projects, and features comments from Jason Husser, director of the Elon University Poll and assistant professor of political science. 

A recent New York Times article exploring competition between cities for large-scale economic development projects featured the results of a spring Elon University Poll survey and insights from Jason Husser, director of the poll and assistant professor of political science. 

The article, “Why Cities Can’t Stop Poaching From One Another,” by reporter Emily Badger appeared in the UpShot section of the Times, and cited the results of an Elon Poll survey of residents in 19 U.S. metros contending for the second headquarters for retail giant Amazon that was released in April. The poll gauged their support for the project and gathered opinions about how the project might impact their communities. 

Drawing from those results, Husser discussed with Badger what people think about the use of incentives to attract such projects. From the article: 

“Even in the most hostile communities for Amazon, like Denver and Austin, there’s still enough support that folks could run a campaign off of it,” said Jason Husser, the director of the Elon poll. In that poll and others, he said, voters don’t appear to be weighing the long-term costs of incentives (of, say, giving resources to companies and sports teams instead of schools). “They’re thinking about the prestige get, whether that’s an Amazon headquarters or a sports team,” Mr. Husser said.