A clear majority of Americans think the postal service should get the funding it needs to deliver ballots in November. However, an enormous gulf emerges when we consider people’s voting intentions.
A new Yahoo News / YouGov Poll shows about two-thirds (64%) of Americans think the United States Postal Service should be provided with enough funding to ensure there are no delays in mail delivery during the election. About one in five (22%) don’t think so and another 12 percent aren’t sure.
Practically everyone who plans to vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris (93%) thinks the USPS should get funds to prevent delays, according to the polling data, while only roughly three in 10 (29%) of those planning to cast their ballot for President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence say the country’s mail carrier should get the additional funding.
Four in five (81%) Americans planning to vote by mail (which accounts for roughly a third of Americans) want to see a funding boost for the postal service, while about half (49%) who plan on voting in person on election day approve. Approval among those who will vote in-person at advanced polling stations sits at 56 percent.
President Trump has made efforts to curtail the postal service and block an additional $25 billion for the mail service, funding which now will go to a vote in the Democrat-controlled House on Saturday. Trump has said he opposes the funding boost because it will make it harder to deliver mail-in ballots during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Overall approval of such efforts isn’t in Trump’s favor. Only around a third (28%) of Americans approve of his efforts to block funding to prevent mail-in voting during the election. About two-thirds (59%) disapprove.
Stark differences along voting intentions appear yet again: 92 percent of those Biden/Harris voters disapprove of the efforts, while 62 percent of Trump/Pence voters approve.
It’s worth noting a sizable portion (22%) of Trump voters say they’re not sure, while virtually no Biden voters (2%) said they weren't sure.
See the toplines and crosstabs from this week’s Yahoo News/YouGov Poll
Methodology: The Yahoo! News survey was conducted by YouGov using a nationally representative sample of 1,529 US adult residents interviewed online between August 14-15, 2020. This sample was weighted according to gender, age, race, and education based on the American Community Survey, conducted by the US Bureau of the Census, as well as 2016 Presidential vote, registration status, geographic region, and news interest. Respondents were selected from YouGov’s opt-in panel to be representative of all US residents. The margin of error for the entire sample is approximately 3.4%.
Image: Getty
