State-Level Support for the Inflation Reduction Act

On August 16, 2022, President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) into law. The passage of the IRA marked the largest investment ever made by the federal government to confront climate change, reduce pollution, and ramp up clean energy production in America. Aside from this landmark investment in clean energy and the economy, the IRA also lowered healthcare and prescription drug costs for millions of Americans.

Across nearly 70 weekly national surveys fielded over the last year, totaling 22,668 respondent interviews, Data for Progress assessed likely voters’ support of the Inflation Reduction Act and then modeled the data to provide estimates of opinion at the state level. We find overwhelming bipartisan support across the country for the Inflation Reduction Act.

We also conducted new polling on the different climate provisions within the IRA and found that they are broadly popular as well, with support for these investments remaining high even a year after a bill was passed. Since the midterm elections, the popularity of key climate provisions of the IRA has remained steady or increased, with Republican voters driving the greatest increase in support for these provisions and a majority of voters across party lines in support of all provisions tested.

Methodology

To provide estimates of opinion at the state level, a machine learning model was trained on nationally representative survey responses linked to a commercial voter file. The model accounts for individual demographic characteristics, vote history, and primary participation as well as a number of political and demographic characteristics of the respondents’ census tract. Once trained on our survey data, the model is used to score the entire voter file, estimating each registered voter’s probability of support for the policy. The process used is known as MRP (or Multilevel Regression with Poststratification). 

Opinion is modeled in terms of two-way support, comparing those who indicated support for the IRA to all other respondents.* The MRP has a margin of error, or measure of uncertainty, of approximately 1%. However, it is important to note that due to a variety of demographic and political factors, prediction accuracy is non-homogeneous. In general, geographies with larger populations are more accurately represented in the aggregate than smaller ones.

Survey Question

The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 invests over $430 billion in clean energy and Affordable Care Act healthcare premiums. It also allows Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices and pays down the national debt by $300 billion. 

Do you support or oppose the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022?

  • Strongly support

  • Somewhat support

  • Somewhat oppose

  • Strongly oppose

  • Not sure

* All other respondents includes both respondents who indicated opposition to the IRA (Somewhat oppose or Strongly oppose), as well as respondents who said they didn’t have an opinion (Not sure).