Photo by imgoph.

As the Post’s Tim Craig reported this morning, it’s looking like the majority of the D.C. Council is lining up against a proposal by Mayor Vince Gray to raise taxes on residents making more than $200,000 a year. More importantly, as the Examiner’s Freeman Klopott wrote over the weekend, D.C. Council Chair Kwame Brown has already made clear that Gray’s tax hike won’t make it past him.

The District’s residents, though, seem to be going in a different direction. A poll commissioned by the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute (and reported on by the Post and WAMU yesterday) finds that 85 percent of residents find the tax hike on the city’s highest earners “totally acceptable” or “acceptable” (66 percent went for the former, 19 percent for the latter), while cuts in services like funding for affordable housing and mental health services are generally seen as “totally unacceptable.” Most surprisingly — and likely something of a shock to tax hike opponents Jack Evans (D-Ward 2) and Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3) — 85 percent of respondents in the city’s wealthiest wards find the increases acceptable, the second-highest number of the four ward groupings tested. (Ward 1 and 6 stood at 87 percent, 4 and 6 and 85 percent, and 7 and 8 at 82 percent.)

All told, the poll finds, 70 percent of residents say that maintaining public services is a higher priority than holding the line on taxes.

Will this poll, along with pressure from social service advocates, be enough to change the dynamic on the council? That’s tough to tell. Despite the poll’s findings that most residents are okay with tax increases, it’s also clear that most residents don’t know much at all about the budget. According to the poll, 62 percent of residents said they know “little or nothing” about Gray’s proposal. Once the budget was described to them, support and opposition split evenly — 46 percent were totally in favor, while 47 percent were totally against. (Without having it explained to them, 25 percent favored it, 24 percent opposed it and 51 percent said they had roughly no clue.) White respondents generally seem to support Gray’s plan (54 to 36), while African American respondents oppose it (36 to 54).

Maybe the one poll finding that will help direct the budget debate that kicks off in the D.C. Council today and will end with a vote in a few weeks is that 42 percent of respondents want the 2012 budget to “have an even balance of spending cuts and tax increases.” Many social service advocates claim that this isn’t the case, and that two of every three dollars cut comes from needed social programs. Proponents of the cuts, including Evans, argue that the city’s budget has grown $4.6 billion in the last decade.

In broader news, 41 percent of poll respondents find that the city is on the wrong track, while 35 percent believe its going in the right direction. Needless to say, this year’s budget debate (and the decisions being made by councilmembers) could well have been very different had so many scandals not hit Gray and Brown so early into each’s tenure.

The complete results of DCFPI’s budget poll can be read below.

Hart Research DC Poll

Update, 12:45 p.m.: I didn’t note this above, but it’s certainly relevant — DCFPI supports the tax hikes. Apologies for not including.