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.

Friday, November 12th, 2021

71% of Washington voters surveyed back Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework

More than sev­en in ten like­ly 2022 Wash­ing­ton vot­ers sup­port the Bipar­ti­san Infra­struc­ture Frame­work that Pres­i­dent Joe Biden will sign into law this Mon­day, a new statewide poll con­duct­ed for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute has found.

71% of respon­dents to a poll that just returned from the field overnight say they sup­port the Infra­struc­ture Invest­ment and Jobs Act, also known as the Bipar­ti­san Infra­struc­ture Frame­work, while 25% are opposed. 4% said they were not sure.

Poll finding: Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework is popular in Washington

Visu­al­iza­tion of NPI’s poll find­ing con­cern­ing Wash­ing­to­ni­ans’ sup­port for the Infra­struc­ture Invest­ment and Jobs Act (click to enlarge)

H.R. 3684 was passed by the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives last week with the votes of all but six of the cham­ber’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic mem­bers, along with thir­teen Repub­li­cans. Before that, it earned the sup­port of a bipar­ti­san major­i­ty in the Sen­ate, includ­ing nine­teen Repub­li­cans. The leg­is­la­tion would make the fol­low­ing con­se­quen­tial invest­ments, accord­ing to a fact sheet pro­vid­ed by the White House:

  • Deliv­er clean water to all Amer­i­can fam­i­lies and elim­i­nate the nation’s lead ser­vice lines
  • Ensure every Amer­i­can has access to reli­able high-speed internet
  • Repair and rebuild our roads and bridges with a focus on cli­mate change mit­i­ga­tion, resilience, equi­ty, and safe­ty for all users
  • Improve trans­porta­tion options for mil­lions of Amer­i­cans and reduce green­house emis­sions through the largest invest­ment in pub­lic tran­sit in U.S. history
  • Upgrade our nation’s air­ports and ports to strength­en our sup­ply chains and pre­vent dis­rup­tions that have caused inflation.
  • Make the largest invest­ment in pas­sen­ger rail since the cre­ation of Amtrak
  • Build a nation­al net­work of elec­tric vehi­cle (EV) chargers
  • Upgrade our pow­er infra­struc­ture to deliv­er clean, reli­able ener­gy across the coun­try and deploy cut­ting-edge ener­gy tech­nol­o­gy to achieve a zero-emis­sions future
  • Make our infra­struc­ture resilient against the impacts of cli­mate change, cyber-attacks, and extreme weath­er events
  • Deliv­er the largest invest­ment in tack­ling lega­cy pol­lu­tion in Amer­i­can his­to­ry by clean­ing up Super­fund and brown­field sites, reclaim­ing aban­doned mines, and cap­ping orphaned oil and gas wells

Con­gress is now attempt­ing to pass a sec­ond bill — the Build Back Bet­ter Jobs & Fam­i­lies Plan — with only Demo­c­ra­t­ic votes through rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, a bud­get­ing process that is immune to the fil­i­buster. This sec­ond bill con­tains cli­mate invest­ments and sup­ports for fam­i­lies that aren’t in the IIJA.

The IIJA may only be the first part of the leg­isla­tive cen­ter­piece Democ­rats are hop­ing to enact in Con­gress before year’s end, but vot­ers in Wash­ing­ton are nev­er­the­less pret­ty excit­ed about it. It’s eleven points more pop­u­lar than the Amer­i­can Res­cue Plan, which we found was well-received last spring at 60%.

We don’t often see sup­port above 70% when we ask about sup­port and oppo­si­tion to pro­posed or recent­ly passed leg­is­la­tion. In this case, though, vot­ers across the ide­o­log­i­cal spec­trum real­ly, real­ly like what they see.

Here’s the full text of the ques­tion we asked and the respons­es we received:

QUESTION: Last week, Con­gress passed the Infra­struc­ture Invest­ment and Jobs Act, also known as the Bipar­ti­san Infra­struc­ture Frame­work, which will invest $1.2 tril­lion in upgrad­ing drink­ing water pipes, mod­ern­ize our elec­tric grid, expand access to broad­band inter­net, repair and rebuild roads and bridges in poor con­di­tion, replace aging bus­es with zero emis­sion vehi­cles, clear out Amtrak’s main­te­nance back­log, and upgrade the nation’s air­ports and sea­ports to make them more resilient. Do you strong­ly sup­port, some­what sup­port, some­what oppose or strong­ly oppose the Infra­struc­ture Invest­ment and Jobs Act, also known as the Bipar­ti­san Infra­struc­ture Framework?

ANSWERS:

  • Sup­port: 71% 
    • Strong­ly sup­port: 51%
    • Some­what sup­port: 20%
  • Oppose: 25%
    • Some­what oppose: 7%
    • Strong­ly oppose: 18%
  • Not sure: 4%

Our poll of 909 like­ly 2022 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers was in the field from Novem­ber 10th-11th, 2021. The sur­vey was con­duct­ed for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling, and has a mar­gin of error of +/- 3.3% at the 95% con­fi­dence inter­val. 50% of respon­dents par­tic­i­pat­ed via land­line and 50% of respon­dents par­tic­i­pat­ed via text (SMS).

Addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion about the sur­vey’s method­ol­o­gy is avail­able here.

The enthu­si­asm for the IIJA is even more appar­ent when we look at how sup­port and oppo­si­tion break down by buck­et. A major­i­ty of respon­dents (51%) said they “strong­ly” sup­port the IIJA, which is more than dou­ble the total num­ber of respon­dents who said they were opposed overall.

Wash­ing­to­ni­ans appre­ci­ate that we have an infra­struc­ture deficit and that we need to tack­le it. This his­toric leg­is­la­tion makes seri­ous invest­ments that we’ve talked about need­ing for years, but haven’t actu­al­ly com­mit­ted to.

Bil­lions of dol­lars from this bill will ben­e­fit com­mu­ni­ties in Wash­ing­ton State, with hun­dreds of mil­lions alone for Wash­ing­ton State air­ports and Sound Transit.

Inter­est­ing­ly, even though the IIJA is a bill request­ed by Pres­i­dent Joe Biden and will be one of his major leg­isla­tive achieve­ments once signed into law, we found that 29% of Trump vot­ers are nev­er­the­less sup­port­ive of it, along with 98% of Biden vot­ers. Vot­ers who con­sid­er them­selves Repub­li­cans are even more sup­port­ive: 38% of them said they strong­ly or some­what sup­port­ed the IIJA, along with 97% of Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers and 61% of inde­pen­dent voters.

Sup­port for the IIJA can be found in every region of the state, although King Coun­ty is the most enthu­si­as­tic, with 86% of vot­ers there sup­port­ive. The next most enthu­si­as­tic region is North Puget Sound, at 72%, fol­lowed by the South Sound at 68%. Sup­port in East­ern and Cen­tral Wash­ing­ton reg­is­tered at 60% and sup­port in the Olympia Penin­su­la and South­west Wash­ing­ton was 58%.

Every sin­gle Demo­c­ra­t­ic mem­ber of the Pacif­ic North­west­’s con­gres­sion­al del­e­ga­tion vot­ed aye on the Infra­struc­ture Invest­ment and Jobs Act. Repub­li­cans were opposed, with the excep­tion of Alaska’s at large rep­re­sen­ta­tive Don Young.

As men­tioned, the IIJA will be signed into law on Mon­day. If you’re inter­est­ed in watch­ing the cer­e­mo­ny, it will be livestreamed on whitehouse.gov.

Adjacent posts

  • Enjoyed what you just read? Make a donation


    Thank you for read­ing The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate, the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute’s jour­nal of world, nation­al, and local politics.

    Found­ed in March of 2004, The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate has been help­ing peo­ple through­out the Pacif­ic North­west and beyond make sense of cur­rent events with rig­or­ous analy­sis and thought-pro­vok­ing com­men­tary for more than fif­teen years. The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate is fund­ed by read­ers like you and trust­ed spon­sors. We don’t run ads or pub­lish con­tent in exchange for money.

    Help us keep The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate edi­to­ri­al­ly inde­pen­dent and freely avail­able to all by becom­ing a mem­ber of the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute today. Or make a dona­tion to sus­tain our essen­tial research and advo­ca­cy journalism.

    Your con­tri­bu­tion will allow us to con­tin­ue bring­ing you fea­tures like Last Week In Con­gress, live cov­er­age of events like Net­roots Nation or the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion, and reviews of books and doc­u­men­tary films.

    Become an NPI mem­ber Make a one-time donation

  • NPI’s essential research and advocacy is sponsored by: