A recent poll surveying Americans in Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, Florida, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Tennessee, Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas commissioned by the State Innovation Exchange (SiX) and conducted by TargetSmart, shows voters’ strong support for: state investment in ensuring residents are safe, healthy, and economically secure; progressive solutions to revenue shortfalls; and policies that benefit workers like paid sick days, enhanced unemployment benefits, and child care. A majority also believe the state government should address economic barriers that impact Black people. The survey was conducted online and by phone in late June/early July and included results from more than 5,000 respondents.
Voters are against budget cuts
By a three-to-one margin, voters want their state government to invest in residents to ensure they are safe, healthy, and economically secure (60%) rather than lowering taxes and cutting funds to services like education, infrastructure, and unemployment insurance (19%). Voters see a major or some role for state government in:
- Safely and fairly administering elections (91%)
- Ensuring equal access to high-quality K-12 public education (86%)
- Stopping the spread of coronavirus (85%)
- Ensuring struggling families and children have access to food (83%)
- Ensuring access to affordable health care (77%)
- Ensure workers have access to paid sick days and paid family leave (71%)
- Ensure access to affordable housing (70%)
- Acknowledge and address systemic racism (68%)
- Ensure access to affordable child care (67%)
- Reducing income inequality by raising the minimum wage and increasing taxes on the wealthy (63%)
Voters support progressive solutions to revenue shortfalls
Voters support a wide range of proposals to raise revenue to prevent large budget cuts to things like education, health care, infrastructure, and human services, including:
- Close corporate tax loopholes (87%);
- Increase taxes and financial penalties on companies that pollute our air and water (85%)’
- Increase taxes on the wealthiest individuals (73%);
- Increase taxes on those making over $250,000 a year (71%);
- Create a carbon tax paid by companies based on how much carbon they emit (69%);
- Increase taxes on profitable corporations (64%).
Voters are with workers
Voters strongly support policies that would provide immediate pocketbook relief for families and workers, including:
- Provide low-interest loans to small businesses to help them make it through the crisis (93%);
- Ban the practice of surprise medical billing (89%);
- Extend the grace period for people to pay health insurance bills before their coverage can be canceled (88%);
- Limit what drug companies can charge for prescription drugs (87%);
- Offer people the option to buy into the same public health insurance plans that are available to state employees if they want to (87%);
- Create an insurance plan to provide paid family and medical leave for employees (80%); and
- Require workplaces to provide paid sick days to their employees (79%)
- Eliminate tax breaks for corporations and large businesses that don’t offer paid sick and family leave and health care to their employees (74%)
- Extending the length of time workers can receive unemployment benefits (58%)
A majority of voters side with workplace safety requirements (55%) over liability protections for corporations (26%).
Voters want state government to remove racial barriers in the economy
Nearly 7-in-10 voters across the target states believe state government should play an active role in acknowledging and addressing systemic racism (68%). Voters also believe the state government should address economic barriers faced by Black Americans (57%).
Click here for more results.