Voters casting ballots Tuesday on whether or not to support their local school budgets might influence a much larger issue: the possible imposition of a statewide property tax cap.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo is currently touring the state pushing the Democrat-controlled Assembly to vote on the cap, a measure that would freeze tax levy increases at 2 percent. Cuomo’s cap was approved in January by the Republican-led Senate.

If a sizable number of budgets fail, it could provide the political pressure needed to bring opposing legislators to the table, said Brian Sampson, executive director of Unshackle Upstate, a fiscally conservative business group based in Rochester.

“I think that if more school budgets are voted down than typically happens, that’s a pretty clear sign to not only statewide officials but school board members that voters have grown impatient,” Sampson said.

But it is the threat of a tax cap that might actually mean more budgets pass this year, said E.J. McMahon, senior fellow with Manhattan Institute’s Empire Center.

Despite state aid cuts, public school districts on average have kept proposed spending increases for next year below 2 percent, and tax levy increases under 4 percent, likely hoping the restraint will take the steam out of the tax cap debate, McMahon said. As such, it’s expected the same number of budgets will be approved as last year, when 92 percent of voters gave a thumbs-up to their district’s spending plans.

But the cuts that have come with those spending reductions, like potential school closings, could make more residents than usual vote “no,” said Robert Lowry, deputy director of the New York state Council of School Superintendents. In the Capital Region, districts in Schalmont, North Colonie, Troy and Bethlehem are all shuttering elementary schools.

Still, McMahon said if most school budgets pass, each side of the tax cap debate will claim victory. Opponents will say school districts can keep costs down without a cap, while proponents will say it proves that a cap wouldn’t be onerous to state education.

“It will depend on the eye of the beholder,” he said.

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