Gaming expansion, the subject of referendum questions on Election Day ballots in three Northeast states, appears likely to go nowhere in Massachusetts and New Jersey.

But Rhode Island might be another story.

If balloting goes the way polls suggest it will, southeastern Connecticut's casinos, already readying for the impact of MGM Springfield, the $950 million resort casino rising in Massachusetts, may emerge unscathed. While the prospect of casinos in northern New Jersey is worrisome, if remote, neither a Tiverton, R.I., casino nor another slots parlor in Massachusetts poses much of a threat, industry analysts have said.

On Nov. 8, Rhode Island voters will weigh in on a proposal to locate a $75 million "convenience" casino in Tiverton, a town of 15,000 people on the eastern shore of Narragansett Bay.

The development site is a mere 400 feet from Fall River, Mass.

If voters statewide and, separately, in Tiverton approve, the Twin River Management Group, owner and operator of Rhode Island’s existing gambling facilities — Twin River Casino in Lincoln and Newport Grand — will shut down the Newport slots parlor and transfer its license to Tiverton.

"We're optimistic but not overly confident," John Taylor Jr., the TRMG chairman, said in an interview last week.

In perhaps the only publicly released measure of support, a 2015 survey commissioned by TRMG found that 60 percent of Tiverton voter households backed the casino proposal.

Mike Silvia, an organizer of the No Tiverton Casino group, said he’s encouraged by the subsequent lack of published poll results — a sign, he hopes, that support has dwindled.

But he’s realistic.

“I don’t think that 60-40 is accurate,” Silvia said. “But we still have some daunting numbers to overcome. We’re hoping for an element of NIMBY (not in my backyard) to surface.”

Tiverton voters have favored previous gaming-expansion proposals elsewhere in the state.

Silvia, whose opposition primarily is based on economics, said that while the state has agreed to cover any shortfall in the $3 million annual revenue TRMG has promised the town, there’s no guarantee that the casino revenue will be used to provide local tax relief. He also maintains that casinos don’t pay employees a living wage and that their presence is associated with an increase in crime and other social ills. Tiverton clergy also have voiced concerns. 

TRMG began conversations with Tiverton residents more than a year ago, according to Taylor. The company, whose Lincoln facility has experienced what one industry analyst has called “explosive growth,” began pondering potential casino sites after acquiring Newport Grand in 2015.

Newport voters had twice voted to reject the introduction of table games at the slots parlor.

“Once we put it (Newport Grand) under contract, we started to think, 'Is there a better place for this license from a geography perspective, from a community-acceptance perspective?’” Taylor said.

After settling on Tiverton, a “bucolic” town Taylor likened to Lincoln, company officials attended more than 40 meetings with local residents.

“The approach we took was not to come in and say, ‘You’re going to love this casino,’” Taylor said. “We told people, ‘We have land under contract, we have a license in Newport ... let’s talk.’”

The Tiverton Town Council voted to have the casino question placed on this year’s Election Day ballots.

Initially, TRMG intended “an easy in, easy out” facility with the same 1,000 slot machines it operates at Newport Grand, as well as some 30 table games. Only after discussions with townspeople did the company agree to add a hotel, a restaurant and entertainment space, Taylor said.

Designwise, Twin River-Tiverton is modeled after Tiverton’s public library.

The town’s police and firefighters unions have endorsed the project and statewide business and labor organizations also have backed it. The Providence Journal urged passage of the statewide referendum in an editorial.

If the Tiverton proposal fails to pass muster with voters, TRMG will continue to operate Newport Grand, Taylor said.

But in Tiverton, the company would be better situated to compete against Massachusetts casinos, one of which, the $2.1 billion Wynn Boston Harbor, is scheduled to open in Everett in 2019. Closer to Rhode Island, the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe’s plans for an Indian casino in Taunton have been derailed by a legal challenge.

The Massachusetts Gaming Commission still could award a license for another casino in southeastern Massachusetts.

Analysts hired by TRMG determined that Newport Grand’s $27 million contribution to state coffers in the last fiscal year could increase to $50 million in the future if a Tiverton casino competed against a Taunton facility. If a Tiverton casino faced no competition in southeastern Massachusetts, it could turn over as much as $70 million annually to the state, Taylor said. 

In planning Tiverton, TRMG assumed Massachusetts eventually would have as many as four casinos — in Everett, Springfield, Taunton and Brockton — in addition to Plainridge Park Casino, a slots parlor that opened last year in Plainville.

TRMG anticipated that Plainridge Park would cost the company’s Lincoln facility 12 percent of its revenue. But, after Plainridge’s first full year of operation, “We’re down just under 6 percent (in Lincoln),” Taylor said.

Revere a long shot

The company also had to factor in the potential impact of a second slots parlor in Massachusetts, the subject of Question 1 on Election Day ballots in the Bay State.

The question, championed by a developer hoping to turn property near the Suffolk Downs race track in Revere into a slots facility, looks to be a decided longshot. Its passage would only authorize the Massachusetts Gaming Commission to issue a license for a second slots parlor, no guarantee that the commission would do so.

In a poll conducted this month by WBUR, Boston’s NPR radio station, 58 percent of likely voters indicated they oppose the proposal, up from 52 percent in a September poll.

Revere voters rejected the plan in a nonbinding referendum held Oct. 18. Turnout was less than 17 percent.

That was a far cry from February 2014, when Revere voters overwhelmingly backed Mohegan Sun’s plan to develop a $1.3 billion resort casino on Suffolk Downs-owned land. That binding vote enabled Mohegan Sun to compete for the coveted Greater Boston casino license that Wynn Resorts eventually won. 

Expansion in N.J.?

In New Jersey, polls show Election Day voters are all but certain to reject a proposed constitutional amendment that would allow casinos — confined in the state to Atlantic City — to two northern New Jersey counties.

Fairleigh Dickinson University announced last week that its latest PublicMind poll found that only 24 percent of registered voters support casino expansion while 70 percent oppose it. In June, 35 percent favored expansion and 58 percent opposed it.

Four Atlantic City casinos ceased operating in 2014 and a fifth, the Trump Taj Mahal, closed this month. Seven remain.

Results of the most recent Fairleigh Dickinson poll showed that 36 percent of voters believe New Jersey has enough casinos and 26 percent think casinos ended up hurting Atlantic City, which now is subject to a potential state takeover.

"When over a third of registered voters believe their casino fix is amply satisfied by what’s already here, and worry that more will do to other communities what casinos did to Atlantic City, the ‘more is better’ argument is a tough sell,” Krista Jenkins, a political science professor and director of PublicMind, said in a news release.

In late September, poll results had prompted Our Turn NJ, a pro-casino group founded by casino developers who floated plans for projects at the Meadowlands in East Rutherford and in Jersey City, to pull the plug on an advertising campaign.

b.hallenbeck@theday.com

Casino ballot questions

Election Day ballots contain these referendum questions, which have been edited to save space:

Rhode IslandQuestion 1 (statewide)/Question 8 (Tiverton): Should a law be approved authorizing Twin River-Tiverton LLC to own a facility, at a specific site in Tiverton, to offer state-operated casino gaming, such as table games?

MassachusettsQuestion 1: Should a law be approved allowing the state Gaming Commission to issue one additional Category 2 license, which would permit operation of a gaming establishment with no table games and not more than 1,250 slot machines at a location that meets certain conditions specified in the law?

New JerseyQuestion 1: Should two new casinos be authorized in two northern New Jersey counties, both at least 72 miles away from Atlantic City?