Forty-four percent (44%) of Americans say gambling on the Internet should not be illegal, but government moves to legalize it and tax it appear to undercut that support.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 37% of adults believe Internet gambling should remain illegal, while 19% are not sure.

Americans were evenly divided on the question of legalizing online gambling in a survey in September 2006.

Both Republicans and Democrats are now closely divided on the issue, but Americans not affiliated with either party oppose legalizing gambling on the Internet by a 20-point margin.

Among the small number of adults who have gambled online, 20% say it should be illegal, but 69% disagree.

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Thirty-four percent (34%) of adults nationwide say they would be less likely to support legalized online gambling if the government could tax the income. Eighteen percent (18%) say the potential for tax revenue makes them more likely to support it, and 43% say taxation has no impact on their decision.

Similarly, 46% of all Americans say they would be less likely to use an Internet gambling site if the site was approved by the government. Just 14% say they would be more likely to use a government-sanctioned online gambling site, while 38% say government involvement would have no impact on their decision whether to use the site.

But 45% of veteran Internet gamblers say government approval of a site would make them more likely to use it.

Forty percent (40%) of adults say gambling on the Internet should be regulated more strictly than other forms of gambling, down 12 points from the 2006 survey. Thirty-three percent (33%) disagree and say it should not be controlled more strictly, and 26% are undecided.

Just seven percent (7%) of Americans say they have ever gambled on the Internet in any way, up from three percent (3%) in 2006. Ninety-one percent (91%) say they have not done any online gambling.

Thirteen percent (13%) of men say they have gambled online, compared to one percent (1%) of women. Americans ages 18 to 29 are far more likely than their elders to have gambled on the Internet.

Rep. Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who chairs the House Financial Services Committee, is pushing to repeal the government ban on Internet gambling. According to a report on the Washington news website The Politico, he hopes to license and regulate online gambling on government-approved websites and estimates that it could generate billions of dollars in tax revenue.

In a survey a year ago, nearly half of Americans (49%) said the federal government should regulate the Internet the same way it does radio and television.

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