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.

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.