NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate provides the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Tuesday, June 8th, 2021

The Biden-Harris administration’s American Rescue Plan is popular with Washingtonians

Vot­ers in Wash­ing­ton State are big fans of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty’s chief 2021 leg­isla­tive accom­plish­ment thus far, with three in five express­ing sup­port for the Amer­i­can Res­cue Plan cham­pi­oned by the Biden-Har­ris admin­is­tra­tion, a sur­vey recent­ly con­duct­ed for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute has found.

60% of nine hun­dred and nine­ty two like­ly 2022 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers sur­veyed late last month by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling said they sup­port­ed the Amer­i­can Res­cue Plan, while 32% were opposed and 8% were not sure.

The American Rescue Plan is very popular with Washingtonians

The Amer­i­can Res­cue Plan is very pop­u­lar with Washingtonians

Approved in Con­gress with only Demo­c­ra­t­ic votes and signed into law by Pres­i­dent Joe Biden on March 11th, 2021, the Amer­i­can Res­cue Plan autho­rizes $1.9 tril­lion of invest­ments to help the nation recov­er from the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic and “Build Back Bet­ter”, in the words of Biden’s 2020 cam­paign slogan.

The Plan:

  • pro­vid­ed for $1,400 eco­nom­ic impact pay­ments to most individuals;
  • expand­ed unem­ploy­ment benefits;
  • extend­ed nutri­tion assistance;
  • sig­nif­i­cant­ly boost­ed the Child Tax Credit;
  • pro­vid­ed bad­ly need­ed resources for pub­lic health research and pan­dem­ic response, includ­ing to the CDC, FDA, and Indi­an Health Services;
  • autho­rized bil­lions of dol­lars in fund­ing for Amtrak, air­lines, pub­lic tran­sit agen­cies, K‑12 schools, col­leges, and universities;
  • and, among oth­er pro­vi­sions, cre­at­ed a Restau­rant Revi­tal­iza­tion Fund and added more fund­ing to the Pay­check Pro­tec­tion Program.

A high lev­el fact sheet describ­ing the Amer­i­can Res­cue Plan, cre­at­ed and pub­lished by the White House, is avail­able from Wik­isource.

The text of the Act is avail­able from Congress.gov.

Nation­al sur­veys from Quin­nip­i­ac, Mon­mouth, and oth­ers have con­sis­tent­ly found broad sup­port for the Amer­i­can Res­cue Plan — with even some Repub­li­can vot­ers sup­port­ive — so our find­ing is not a sur­prise. But it’s nice to have a state lev­el data point to go along with all of the nation­al data we already have.

Since the Plan has already been in the news a lot and is the most con­se­quen­tial leg­is­la­tion of this Con­gress, we opt­ed not to describe its pro­vi­sions in our ques­tion, to ensure our ques­tion would be as sim­ply and neu­tral­ly word­ed as pos­si­ble. Here’s the text of the ques­tion and the respons­es that we received:

QUESTION: Do you strong­ly sup­port, some­what sup­port, some­what oppose, or strong­ly oppose the Amer­i­can Res­cue Plan, also known as the most recent COVID-19 relief bill?

ANSWERS:

  • Sup­port: 60% 
    • Strong­ly sup­port: 45%
    • Some­what sup­port: 15%
  • Oppose: 32%
    • Some­what oppose: 11%
    • Strong­ly oppose: 21%
  • Not sure: 8%

Notably, more Wash­ing­to­ni­ans strong­ly sup­port the Plan than oppose it altogether.

Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers almost unan­i­mous­ly favor the Plan, with 92% of those sur­veyed express­ing sup­port (81% strong­ly, 11% some­what). Repub­li­can vot­ers are most­ly opposed (72%), although 18% did say they sup­port the plan, with 10% not sure. A major­i­ty of inde­pen­dents are also sup­port­ive: 56% sup­port the plan, 30% oppose it. 13% of inde­pen­dents said they were not sure.

Nation­al polls have pre­vi­ous­ly found high­er per­cent­ages of Repub­li­can vot­ers sup­port­ive of the Amer­i­can Res­cue Plan. How­ev­er, Wash­ing­ton has few­er vot­ers who iden­ti­fy as Repub­li­cans than many oth­er states in the country.

Our sur­vey of 992 like­ly 2022 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers was in the field from Tues­day, May 25th through Wednes­day, May 26th, 2021.

It uti­lizes a blend­ed method­ol­o­gy, with auto­mat­ed phone calls to land­lines (50%) and text mes­sage answers from cell phone only respon­dents (50%).

The poll was con­duct­ed by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute, and has a mar­gin of error of +/- 3.1% at the 95% con­fi­dence interval.

Pres­i­dent Joe Biden was favor­ably rat­ed by 54% of poll respon­dents, a find­ing we released last month. An even high­er num­ber of respon­dents — 56% — expressed sup­port for abol­ish­ing the fil­i­buster in the Unit­ed States Sen­ate.

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One Comment

  1. This is an impor­tant area of con­cern. Gov­ern­ing well needs to be fol­lowed with robust can­di­date recruit­ment. The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty must pri­or­i­tize efforts “to con­test every seat”, cer­tain­ly every con­gres­sion­al dis­trict, and also each leg­isla­tive dis­trict. We know that some leg­isla­tive dis­tricts have a lot of Repub­li­can vot­ers, but cen­sus-wise, no Wash­ing­ton leg­isla­tive dis­trict has less than 30,000 Demo­c­ra­t­ic votes. The Par­ty must present them with a cred­i­ble can­di­date — that is a basic func­tion of a par­ty orga­ni­za­tion, after all. 

    # by Carl Schwartz :: June 26th, 2021 at 7:55 PM
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