Proposition 208 wins, but can it keep its promises?

The most underwhelming win in Tuesday's election may be Proposition 208, the Invest in Education Act.

The AP called the race for the initiative on Thursday night, with the measure holding a 52%-48% lead.

Proposition 208 imposes a new 3.5% tax on individual income above $250,000 and household income above $500,000.

The margin of victory was surprisingly unimpressive.

And not just because of the narrative that Arizona has gone blue — the past several days of updated vote tallies rebut that argument as oversimplified and, at best, premature.

Or that the initiative was championed by the same Red for Ed forces that had just two years earlier got Gov.

Doug Ducey to knuckle under to demands for a 20% increase in teacher pay. The movement ushered in Democrat Kathy Hoffman as state superintendent.

Proposition 208 was conceived and refined through polling. That is, targeting Arizona's high earners to raise an estimated $1 billion for education was settled on because it had tested well in polls.

The opposition to the initiative complained that the Invest in Ed camp neglected to seek a broader coalition with political or business leaders or to take into account the adverse effects the tax would have on the state economy. In other words, Proposition 208 was designed for expedience.

The architects of the plan acknowledged as much when they first tried to qualify Invest in Ed in 2018. (It got booted off the ballot by the state Supreme Court over problematic language.) They had explored other possibilities, including combining an income-tax hike with an increase in sales tax. None of the options proved as popular as taxing the rich.

Which itself, as it turns out, is not as popular as the Invest in Ed coalition believed.

Proposition 208 saw its lead shrink from 58%-42% in early results on Tuesday night to its current 52%-48%. It's a far cry from poll results over the last year, some of which showed the measure winning by double-digits in percentage points.

(There's a big knock on polling on the national races this election cycle, and rightfully so. Polling on local contests, on the other hand, have been fairly on target, save Invest in Ed.)

Still, it's a win.

Yet bigger questions lie ahead:

● Will it come close to raising the $940 million attributed to state Department of Revenue projections?

● Will it resolve the teacher-shortage crisis in the state or stanch the exodus of teachers who bolt the profession within their first three years?

● Will it lead to reduced class sizes? Or result in higher academic achievement?

● Will it be the end, for the near future anyway, of the perennial call for greater funding of Arizona schools?

The questions aren't traps set by critics. They are, rather, pledges and predictions made by David Lujan of the Arizona Center for Economic Progress, in support of Invest in Ed. He said the impact will be quantifiable and self-evident.

A lot of history and evidence suggest no. Time will tell. The money from the tax won’t flow to schools until 2022.

But as with the margin of victory, it'll be hard for Proposition 208 to outperform expectations.