OK, so now we now how the shale gas industry is going to try to fight off the growing efforts in the Pennsylvania Legislature to make the industry pay a real severance tax, like those in other states, rather than stick with the much lighter "impact fee" passed earlier in Gov. Tom Corbett's term.

A new poll done for the Marcellus Shale Coalition offers the road map.

The poll reaffirms that the industry starts this debate on the losing side — way on the losing side.

Snapshot from the poll in question, before respondents were fed potential arguments against a severance tax.

Asked straight up about a severance tax, before pollsters engage in any hocus-pocus, Pennsylvanians who were polled favor it by 55 to 34 percent, with 11 percent undecided.

(That result deliberately excludes people in the poll who admitted they were not following the severance tax issue closely — a group that's probably more inclined, on average, to favor the tax.)

So how might the industry change those bad poll numbers?

Cue the hocus-pocus.

Let's see what happens when the pollster artfully suggests, without exactly saying so, that the tax "results in jobs leaving the state and Pennsylvania residents losing their jobs."

Presto! The poll numbers flip – 58 percent oppose the severance tax, with only 33 percent in support.

Obvious conclusion: Portray the tax as a job-killer.

Only one problem there – gas drilling here is so lucrative, passing a Pennsylvania severance tax that's in line with other states will make little difference on this score.

A gas drilling site in Pennsylvania.

The respected oil publication Platt's recently noted, "Producers will howl, but Marcellus Shale gas is so inexpensive to produce and so close to premium markets that most of the region's producers are making well above the 15 percent internal rate of return benchmark."

So, the industry's poll carried out other lines of attack. Question 6 suggests that the tax might be used to pay for (cue the brooding, evil music): Public Employee Pensions!

That unsavory prospect produces about the same strong opposition to the tax as the "job-killer" claim.

Obvious strategy: Accuse tax supporters of using it to pay for public employee pensions.

And what happens when the pollster combines the two lines of attack?

Question 7 asks about choosing between having new gas industry jobs and a tax on natural gas production that helps fund the state budget. Framed that way, opposition spikes to an impressively scary 61 percent.

Those poll results prompted PennLive to run a story headlined: "Pennsylvania voters are not solidly behind a drilling tax, poll says."

The key word there is "solidly." It means "if they are given the industry's arguments without rebuttal."

But supporters of a severance tax can play the same kind of polling game. They can ask questions like:

Would you oppose a severance tax on natural gas even if it means deeper cuts to education or forces you to pay higher taxes?

Would you oppose a severance tax if you knew that almost all other gas-producing states in the U.S. have a similar tax?

Would you oppose the tax if you knew that most of the tax will be paid by non-residents, because most of Pennsylvania's gas is sold out of state?

If I were a betting man, I'd bet a poll like that will show support for a severance tax on natural gas is even higher than the original 55 percent in favor.

So what we have here is a typical advocacy poll, commissioned by the industry side of the severance tax issue, in hopes of showing that "the public" is on its side.

If they have to lead the people polled into thinking their way, by serving up their side's spin without rebuttal, well, that's the way the game is played. (And if doing that doesn't produce the desired results, you will never even hear a peep about said poll.)

In this case, the industry's poll put another thumb on the scale by carefully selecting the people who were polled. It zeroed in on the kind of people likely to vote in November's mid-term election. They're older, whiter, and more conservative than the state as a whole. It's not representative of all Pennsylvanians.

That said, this particular poll did what it was intended to do. It found that if the gas drilling industry spends enough money spinning Pennsylvanians with its preferred message, it can probably scare enough legislators into blocking a severance tax in this election year.

But if legislators wimp out and do that, it's not because they're heeding the will of a majority of Pennsylvanians.

Matt Zencey is Deputy Opinion Editor of PennLive and The Patriot-News. Email mzencey@pennlive.com and on Twitter @MattZencey.