As the Senate prepares to vote on the tax compromise brokered between Republicans and President Obama, a Washington Post-ABC News poll released yesterday shows that nearly seven in 10 Americans support the proposal.
Sixty-nine percent of those surveyed said they support the tax deal, compared to 29% who were opposed. Even when explicitly told of the prime objections to the package — that it would add $900 billion to the deficit and give tax breaks to the wealthy — 62% of all respondents said they still supported the deal.
However, despite high bipartisan backing for the deal as a whole, few said they strongly supported it, with respondents clearly split along party lines over the compromise’s components.
According to the Washington Post:
A slender 11 percent of those polled back all four of the deal’s primary tax provisions: an across-the-board extension of Bush-era tax cuts, additional jobless benefits, a payroll tax holiday and a $5 million threshold for inheritance taxes. Just 38 percent support even two of the components.
The most contentious aspect of the compromise — extending all of the Bush tax cuts for two years — drew support from 85% of Republicans, but only 38% from Democrats and 49% from Independents. Congressional Democrats had been pushing to extend the tax cuts only for Americans earning up to $250,000 a year.
On the deal’s element to extend unemployment benefits for 13 months, support was split the other way around. Eighty-eight percent of Democrats and almost three-fourths of Independents support that aspect of the compromise, compared to 55% of Republicans who support that extension.
The final two components of the deal received lukewarm support. A slim 52% majority of all respondents supported reforming the estate tax, while only 39% supported trimming social security payroll taxes.
Yet when all those components are bundled into an all or nothing package, a consensus emerged. Sixty-eight percent of Democrats, 68% of Independents, and 75% of Republicans said they supported the package as a whole.
Bizarrely though, while respondents overwhelmingly supported the proposal, a plurality said they thought it would have no impact on the economy. Forty-three percent of those surveyed said the compromise would make almost no difference to the economy, while 36% said it would be helpful, and 17% said it would be harmful.
The mixed support for elements of the package also led to a mildly enthusiastic support for it as a whole. Though a large majority of respondents supported the package, only 20% gave it “strong support.”
The Washington Post-ABC News poll was conducted December 9-12 among 1,001 adults nationwide. It has a margin of error of 3.5%.
