In the next week or so, Gallatin Public Affairs and its research partner, GS Strategy Group, will conduct a survey asking likely voters in Washington state for their perspectives on everything from the presidential election to the state of the economy.

In conjunction, we'll have a few questions for you as well.

The Journal will be conducting a survey on its website starting next week and running through early June, asking readers to answer 10 to 15 questions. The questions will be the same as some of those that will be asked of likely voters, but will concentrate on business and the economic climate. We'll publish our findings and those of the broader survey in our June 21 edition.

This is different from the reader survey we've been conducting in recent weeks that asks for demographic data and consumer behavior, and it's intended to give us insight into our reader base. With the economic-climate survey, we want to know how our readers view the current state of business affairs and learn what they think the future holds.

Your answers by themselves will be interesting to note, but where we hope to see additional value is in comparing and contrasting those with the results of the broader survey that's to be conducted by Gallatin and GS Strategy Group. That survey will involve 700 interviews—400 statewide and 300 of what they call an "oversample" in Eastern Washington.

The Boise-based Idaho Business Review partnered with the pollsters on a similar survey last spring, and the results were interesting, if not somewhat surprising. In many instances, business respondents answered differently from the general public.

For example, that poll asked readers which was the largest sector of the Idaho economy. Nearly half of the general public said agriculture topped the list. But only a quarter of business respondents chose agriculture, and more than a third of them gave the nod to health care.

The Idaho Business Review reported, by the way, that neither group was correct, if one was gauging the sectors by gross domestic product. Despite all of its struggles, the real estate sector was the largest, followed by finance and health care, then agriculture.

In many instances, businesspeople appeared to be more optimistic than the general public.

For example, when asked whether the Idaho economy would improve, get worse, or stay the same in the next two years, the business respondents were more optimistic, with more than two-thirds of respondents saying it would improve. Only 38 percent of the general public said it would get better.

That was a year ago, and for as challenging as some parts of the economy are today, most would agree the business climate is better now than it was then. When similar questions are asked in the Eastern Washington, it will be interesting to see if the perspectives of the two groups are more in line with each other than they were in Idaho.

I honestly don't know what to expect, but I'm eager to see the results. The more people who participate, the better the data will be, so consider taking a few minutes in the next couple of weeks and taking the survey at our web site, www.spokanejournal.com. You will be contributing to the conversation about where our local economy is today and where it is heading in the near future.