Voters Support A Public Option For Broadband
By Ethan Winter and Julian Brave NoiseCat
On Thursday, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that the next round of stimulus to include funding for a public option for internet access. As House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn noted, only 30 percent of households in his district have internet. One means of addressing this digital divide would be for the federal government to create a public option for broadband. With access to the internet––critical infrastructure in the 21st century––households would be able to connect their families to essential services and social rights like education, healthcare, and jobs.
In a survey fielded at the end of March, Data for Progress found that 36 percent of workers were now doing their jobs from home. At the same time, school closures have kept students across the country away from the classroom. Quarantine measures have placed considerable strain on existing broadband infrastructure, while families without Internet access have been left even further behind as more and more of our economic opportunities, education systems and lives have turned digital.
As part of an April survey, we sought to test support for the creation of a public option for broadband that would provide federally funded Internet access to households across the country. We tested this hypothetical proposal in a partisan environment, with Democratic arguments for and Republican arguments against. Specifically, we asked voters:
Some Democrats in Congress are proposing a bill to create a public option for broadband internet. Democrats say that due to the need for remote work and school caused by pandemics like the coronavirus the government should provide a public internet provider for all Americans. Republicans say that the government is inefficient at delivering these services and this is best left to the free market. Do you support or oppose this policy?
Voters support such a proposal by a 34-percentage-point margin with 60 percent in support and 26 percent opposed. Looking at support broken out across a series of measured demographics we find that men are narrowly more supportive than women; voters under forty-five are moderately more enthusiastic about the proposal than those over; those with college degrees tend to be more supportive than those without; that white voters are slightly more supportive than black voters. Support for this proposal is also bipartisan, a striking finding when one considers the question included partisan arguments. Democrats back it by a 56-percentage-point margin (74 percent support, 18 percent oppose) while Republicans do so by a 22-percentage-point margin (55 percent support, 33 percent oppose).
In a mid-March short essay published in Politico, Harvard social scientist Theda Skocpol argued that the coronavirus pandemic would intensify existing inequalities between the top fifth of earners, who tend to be middle class professionals, living in households with access to Internet and the services and goods it provides, and the rest of the country, whose work and family life will be more disrupted by quarantine and who may not have access to the Internet. “Discussions of inequality in America often focus on the growing gap between the bottom 99 percent and the top 1 percent,” wrote Skocpol. “But the other gap that has grown is between the top fifth and all the rest—and that gap will be exacerbated by this crisis.”
A public option for broadband could help level the playing field, providing working families access to the Internet and all the essential goods and services that are increasingly found online. Even before the outbreak of the coronavirus, we’ve seen efforts, especially at the local level, to do precisely this. Towns in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, for example, voted during annual town meetings to join something called the “Communication Union District,” an organization wherein the “towns share the responsibility of building, operating and maintaining infrastructure for high speed broadband.” Steps like this can provide a blueprint for further action taken at the federal level. Voters support a public option for broadband and it’s time for lawmakers in Congress to act.
Ethan Winter (@EthanBWinter) is an analyst for Data for Progress.
Julian Brave NoiseCat (@jnoisecat) is Vice President of Policy & Strategy for Data for Progress