The difference was most significant for income taxes: The Republican question that littered primary ballots asked simply if voters wanted to phase out the income tax, and of course they did. The question on the poll asked if they wanted to eliminate the income tax by increasing the sales tax. That is, it included that dirty little secret that most people don’t like to acknowledge: You can’t get something for nothing; if you get rid of one of the two major sources of funding for state government, you’re going to have make it up somehow.

Still, it’s surprising, and encouraging, that when asked if they wanted to make the trade that conventional wisdom says they will always, always want to make, given how much they hate the income tax, they said … meh. Specifically, 40 percent endorsed the swap, 34 percent opposed it, and 26 percent were undecided. That is not a rousing endorsement. It’s not even a tepid endorsement. What’s particularly surprising, and encouraging, is that pollsters didn’t get that un-endorsement after explaining the pros and the cons of the swap.

The pros, of course, are pretty straightforward: You hate income taxes; you don’t mind so much paying sales taxes.

The cons are more complicated, but oh so much weightier: The sales tax already is about as high as we can safely put it without seriously damaging our retail economy, whereas the income tax — at least the income tax that people actually pay — is not. The sales tax is becoming a less reliable source of revenue because a smaller and smaller portion of our consumer spending is subject to the sales tax, as the Legislature keeps carving out more and more loopholes and we keep buying more and more untaxed services instead of taxed goods and as we keep buying more and more stuff over the Internet and refusing to pay the tax that we owe but that the merchants don’t collect and the state doesn’t have the resources to track down.