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Welcome back to the Data for Progress newsletter, your weekly update on our research, blog posts, and memos.
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Yesterday was one of the most exciting days in DFP history: White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki opened her press briefing citing our polling on President Biden’s Build Back Better infrastructure plan. When speaking about the massive popular support for Biden’s infrastructure plan, she noted that “a Data for Progress poll showed that by a 35-point margin, voters wanted to pay for this plan by asking the wealthy and big corporations to pay their fair share, just like the President is calling for.”
The poll in question? Our polling on Biden’s Build Back Better infrastructure plan with Invest in America, which shows that a majority of voters (including Republicans) support Biden’s plan — including each specific component of the proposal — and want Republicans to work with Biden instead of obstructing him. We also found, as Psaki noted, that voters want to fund the Build Back Better plan by increasing taxes on the wealthy and on corporations, instead of cutting existing social service programs to pay for new ones.
Here are some other highlights from DFP over the past week:
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Jen Psaki isn’t the only Biden administration official keeping tabs on our polling (*ba-dum-tiss) — Biden senior advisor Anita Dunn reportedly cited our polling showing that all the individual components of the Build Back Better plan have strong majority support from voters.
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Our Build Back Better polling was also featured on the Rachel Maddow show, where Rachel noted that “a Data for Progress/Invest in America poll found support for a large infrastructure plan among likely voters nationwide was almost 70 percent. That includes 50 percent of likely Republican voters.”
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One of our favorite aspects of the Build Back Better plan? Its inclusion of a Clean Electricity Standard, which we’ve been pushing for along with Evergreen Action.
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We have new polling out with Vox this week on voter opinion of pharmaceutical companies. Unsurprisingly given their role in developing the coronavirus vaccine, voters are feeling a little warmer and fuzzier towards pharmaceutical companies than they were when we last polled this issue in November 2019: 56% of voters hold favorable attitudes towards pharma now, as opposed to 48% from our November polling. However, that doesn’t mean people are letting pharma companies off the hook for the high price of prescription drugs in the U.S. — 77% of Americans say that even though pharma companies have done a good job developing the coronavirus vaccine, the government still needs to regulate them to reduce drug costs.
- What’s a key ingredient in building up our public infrastructure and making a just transition to clean energy that you’ve never heard of? Semiconductors, an electrical component found in computer chips. DFP co-founder Colin McAuliffe was on the blog this week making the case for a progressive plan for creating millions of good jobs by scaling up American semiconductor manufacturing.
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