Voters Support a Lobbying Tax

By Sean McElwee and John Ray

As the Democratic primary heats up, candidates have begun introducing plans to curb the influence of lobbying on the government. Elizabeth Warren’s campaign has included several concrete proposals to curb corrupting corporate influence, including a tax on lobbying. Data for Progress has the first polling numbers on this idea, on a recent sample including just over a thousand US voters.

We attempted to be as explicit as possible with voters in a few ways. One, we clarified the fact that lobbying is just a corporate activity and also covert activities designed to influence government decisions on behalf of the public interest. Two, we were explicit that such a proposal would involve substantial tax increases. Three, we clarified that a tax on lobbying includes taxing “lobbying expenditures,” not campaign contributions, which voters often falsely conflate. Using details from a recent Warren for President proposal, we asked,

Would you [support or oppose] a policy imposing a new tax on businesses that lobby the government? Lobbying includes any activity meant to influence decisions made in government, typically on behalf of a company, industry, or the public interest. This would impose a 35 percent tax on lobbying expenditures over $500,000 per year, a 60 percent tax on lobbying expenditures over $1 million per year, and a 75 percent tax on lobbying expenditures above $5 million per year.

Voters support such a plan by a 59-22 margin, while about 1 in 5 voters remain undecided. Contrary to what one might expect, this includes high support across the party divide. Democrats, Independents, and Republicans all on net support a plan to tax business lobbying. Democrats support such a measure by a 70-11 margin, as do Independents by a 54-18 margin. Despite what one might think about Republican voters, they are no fans of corporate lobbyists either, supporting a tax on lobbying expenditures by a 47-35 margin.

 
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Notably, while it is often suspected that government spending policy has highly variable support across geography, we find that there is no geographic divide on this question. About 59 percent of voters in urban areas, 59 percent of those in the suburbs, and 57 percent of voters living in rural areas support this plan. In contrast, less than a quarter of voters in each actually opposes such a plan, with about 1 in 5 voters in each being undecided rather than in opposition.

 
 

This remains true when controlling for party identification. The policy has outright majority support among urban and suburban Democrats, urban and suburban Independents, and rural-area Republicans. The policy has net positive support among every group except for urban-area Republicans, who only represent about 8 percent of the sample.

 
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The lobbying tax could be an effective issue for Democrats to win over independent voters.


Sean McElwee (@SeanMcElwee) is Co-founder and Executive Director of Data for Progress.

John Ray John Ray (@johnlray) is a Senior Political Analyst at YouGov Blue.

On behalf of Data for Progress, YouGov Blue fielded a survey from 11/27-11/29/19 on YouGov’s online panel. The survey sampled registered voters and was weighted to be representative of the population of registered voters by age, race/ethnicity, sex, education, US Census region, and 2016 Presidential vote choice. The sample included 1,029 US voters and the survey margin of error was +/-3.8 percent.