Electric FREAKING Postal Vans
By Marcela Mulholland and Ethan Winter
The past two months have witnessed substantial partisan fighting over how to respond to coronavirus and the ensuing economic crisis. While some relief measures have been passed, one beloved American institution has been left by the wayside: the United States Postal Service (USPS).
The USPS has long sat in the crosshairs of President Trump who has accused the agency of providing Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon and owner of the Washington Post, a sweetheart deal on parcel delivery. In retaliation, the Trump Administration has blocked funding for the USPS at almost every turn. The implications of this austerity are heightened as it becomes increasingly clear that we’re heading into a general election that will rely heavily on mail-in-ballots. Postal workers will likely become makeshift poll workers as they oversee and facilitate the most essential part of the democratic process, voting.
While Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi sought more funding for the USPS, Republicans in Congress have, to this point, followed the president’s lead in denying the USPS direly needed aid. There’s one proposal, however, that voters from both parties support: electrifying the USPS fleet of delivery vehicles.
This idea would cost around $6 billion––meaning it’s relatively cheap, especially in the backdrop of trillion-dollar stimulus bills––and would provide outsized social benefits. David Roberts of Vox recently made the case for electrifying the postal fleet citing its impact on bettering public health, modernizing public services, and reducing carbon pollution. Notably, electrifying the USPS postal fleet would put Americans in every corner of the country in contact with a green, public service. Such contact has the potential to reap political benefits too, as people see firsthand what good can come from government investment in energy-efficient, green, social services. This shift would build upon the already overwhelming support among voters for electrifying the postal fleet.
As part of a May survey fielded by Data for Progress, we posed voters with the following question:
Congress is considering a stimulus package to address coronavirus and the economic fallout from the pandemic. For each of the following potential components of the package, please indicate if you support or oppose them a proposal to invest $6 billion to replace the United States Postal fleet of aging trucks with electric vehicles manufactured in the United States. Do you support or oppose this proposal?
Overall, voters support this proposal by a 34-percentage-point margin (61 percent support, 23 percent oppose). Voters under forty-five are moderately more supportive of this proposal than those over forty-five. Support for this proposal is also bipartisan: Democrats back it by a 60-percentage-point margin (73 percent support, 13 percent oppose) and Republicans do so by a 16-percentage-point margin (51 percent support, 35 percent oppose)
Polling has also shown that the USPS is the most popular governmental agency in existence. Enshrined in the Constitution, the USPS as an institution serves to connect a transcontinental country, connecting Americans in all 50 states as well as US territories. The USPS’s fleet of well-known delivery vans is aging and, voters agree, it’s time to give postal workers an environmentally-friendly upgrade.
Marcela Mulholland (@x3Marcela_) is Deputy Director for Climate at Data for Progress.
Ethan Winter (@EthanBWinter) is an analyst at Data for Progress.
On May 4, 2020 Data for Progress conducted a survey of 1143 likely voters nationally using web panel respondents. The sample was weighted to be representative of likely voters by age, gender, education, urbanicity, race, and voting history. The survey was conducted in English. The margin of error is ± 2.9 percent.