The American Rescue Plan is Popular and Holds Bipartisan Support
By Evangel Penumaka
Over the weekend, Senate Democrats passed President Biden’s American Rescue Plan, a $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package that funds a number of provisions essential for our pandemic recovery. In new polling by Invest in America and Data for Progress of 1,429 likely voters fielded from March 5th to March 7th, we find that Biden’s relief package is popular with likely voters. We also find likely voters support passing additional public investments beyond the American Rescue Plan.
In our polling, we first asked likely voters whether they supported or opposed the American Rescue Plan after providing them with a brief description of its contents. Sixty-nine percent of voters support the bill, and we find this support holds strong across parties: 84 percent of self-identified Democrats, 65 percent of Independents and 54 percent of Republicans support the legislation.
We next tested individual support for the main provisions in the bill — a question we previously polled at the start of February. We find that support has not wavered in the past few weeks. Likely voters continue to overwhelmingly back the bill’s substance, including grants to small businesses (83 percent), additional stimulus checks to most Americans (78 percent), funding to help schools reopen (75 percent), and extensions to unemployment benefits (71 percent).
We also asked voters whether Congress should prioritize passing the relief bill or instead focus on the national debt, as much of opposition to the American Rescue Plan has focused on cost and its effects on the national deficit. We find that the majority of voters reject these conservative arguments, and agree that this is the time for action. By a 24-point margin, we find national voters think Congress should prioritize passing the bill even if this results in an increase to the national debt (58 percent support the bill, 34 percent oppose it). Once again, we find this support extends across party lines: 76 percent of Democrats and 56 percent of Independent voters prioritize immediate relief over austerity. Republicans, meanwhile, are more split. While a majority of Republicans — 55 percent — favor passing a smaller bill to help the government keep the debt in check, 40 percent still report support for the American Rescue Plan under this frame.
Lastly, we looked ahead to examine voter attitudes of President Biden’s Build Back Better, a plan to generate job creation and invest in infrastructure, clean energy and manufacturing. We find the majority of voters (67 percent) support creating jobs through additional public investments to these sectors by a 45-percentage-point margin. Notably, this policy agenda has strong bipartisan support: 77 percent of Democrats, 59 percent of Independents and 61 percent of Republicans would support additional public investments in order to fully recover from the economic downturn the pandemic created.
Biden’s American Rescue Plan currently faces a final vote on Tuesday March 8th in the U.S. House of Representatives. It is crucial for members of Congress to reflect on how essential the bill is in order to support our pandemic recovery, and that voters want to see this legislation passed. If bipartisanship is the goal, the American Rescue Plan is the answer.
Evangel Penumaka (@evangelpenumaka) is a polling analyst at Data for Progress
Survey Methodology:
From March 5 to March 7, 2021, Data for Progress conducted a survey of 1429 likely voters nationally using web panel respondents. The sample was weighted to be representative of likely voters by age, gender, education, race, and voting history. The survey was conducted in English. The margin of error is ±3 percentage points.
Survey crosstabs