Welcome back to the Data for Progress newsletter, your weekly update on our research, blog posts, and memes.

An Overwhelming Majority of Americans Want Congress to Pass More Stimulus — Now
It’s hard to get voters to agree on anything — but in a new poll, we found a whopping 81 percent of Americans want Congress to pass a new stimulus bill before the end of the year.

What do they want in it? Seventy-five percent of voters prioritize another round of stimulus checks, 55 percent prioritize food aid, 52 percent prioritize more small business loans, and 51 percent prioritize increased funding for coronavirus testing, contact tracing, and vaccine development. 

Read the full results in this Vox piece here!


Memo: Polling in Swing Congressional Districts and Progressive Policies Appeal
Centrist Democrats have kept no secret about who they blame for Democrats’ underwhelming performance in 2020 Congressional races: progressives. In a recent call with House Democrats, for example, moderate Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger said “we need to not ever use the word ‘socialist’ or ‘socialism’ ever again...we lost good members because of that.”

We teamed up with Justice Democrats, Sunrise Movement, and New Deal Strategies to dismantle the narrative that the left flank is to blame — and to show that progressive policies that deliver tangible results for voters are Democrats’ best path forward.

We surveyed voters in 13 key swing districts that Democrats either lost or narrowly held, and found that a plurality of these voters did not believe that their district’s Democratic candidate was a “socialist.” However, about two-thirds of swing district voters — 66 percent — support a $3 trillion coronavirus relief bill, 57 percent want to legalize marijuana, and 52 percent want to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour.




Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García: It’s Time for Congress to Give Public Transportation the Funding it Deserves
Since 1982, about 80 percent of federal transportation funding has been allocated to highways, while only 20 percent has been allocated to public transit. With 2.8 million essential workers relying on public transportation — especially low-income communities of color — that’s not enough.

In a new piece on our blog, Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García argues for transit parity — spending the same on public transit as we do for highways — and shows that increased public transportation spending isn’t just the right thing to do: it’s politically popular. Sixty-four percent of voters, including 46 percent of Republicans, want Congress to spend more on public transit. 




DFP in Vox: Biden Can’t Move the Needle on Environmental Justice Without Updated Data
Biden’s $2 trillion climate plan includes a commitment to allocating 40 percent of funding to frontline communities. That’s a lot of money — $800 billion — and it would be a catastrophic missed opportunity if that spending didn’t go to the communities that need it most.

That’s why we need the Biden administration to revamp the Environmental Protection Agency’s EJSCREEN. To do so, policymakers should look to states for guidance — California, for instance, has a very effective tool called CalEnviroScreen, which generates cumulative impact scores based on pollution burdens and population characteristics (Oakland pictured below).



Marcella Mulholland and Julian Brave NoiseCat broke this all down in a great Vox piece — give it a read here!


Sean McElwee’s Op-Ed in Salon: Biden Can Unite the Country by Dumping Corporate Lobbyists
President-elect Joe Biden is all about unity — which can be hard to come by in today’s polarized political climate. 

In a new piece for Salon, DFP executive director Sean McElwee shows that Biden’s path to unity won’t be achieved by following the Beltway wisdom and stocking his administration with alumni of Wall Street and the corporate world. Instead, our polling shows the opposite: rejecting corporate influence is Biden’s best shot at creating an administration with bipartisan appeal. Our surveys find that 63 percent of Democratic voters and 54 percent of Republican voters (!!) think Biden should avoid appointing former corporate lobbyists and executives.


Meme of the Week



From The Blog
Americans Want to Tax Film Franchises to Fund the Arts
Voters Oppose Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
It’s Time for Congress to Give Public Transportation the Funding It Deserves
When Justice and Politics Match: Deb Haaland Should be Biden’s Interior Secretary
Americans Want to Tax Film Franchises to Fund the Arts


Memos
Memo: How the Supreme Court Has Turned False Narratives on Policing into More Police Power
Memo: Harm Reduction Practice and Innovation in Response to the Covid-19 Pandemic in San Francisco
Memo: Georgia Voters Support Progressive Issues
Memo: Polling in Swing Congressional Districts and Progressive Policies Appeal


Media Hits
If Biden wants to unite the country, one thing is clear: Dump the corporate lobbyists @Salon
An overwhelming majority of Americans want Congress to pass more stimulus — now @Vox
Biden can’t move the needle on environmental justice without these 2 things @Vox
“Our culture is not up for sale”: The stakes of Trump’s push to drill in the Arctic refuge @Vox
21 Predictions for 2021 @Grist
Should Biden Go Big on Public Housing? @Bloomberg
How Biden Can Ensure Every Federal Agency Is Fighting Climate Change @Gizmodo


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