41% Favor High-Speed Rail Plan, 46% Oppose
Voters aren’t paying much attention to the president’s plan for building a high-speed rail system, but there is a huge partisan gap in perceptions of the plan.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that, overall, 41% of Likely Voters favor the plan and 46% are opposed. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
Fifty-nine percent (59%) of Democrats like the plan. However, 62% of Republicans and 55% of unaffiliated voters are opposed.
Upper-income Americans are more supportive of the high-speed rail plan than those who earn less than $60,000 annually.
By a 57% to 28% margin, voters believe that cutting government spending would do more to create jobs than building a high-speed rail network.
As on many issues, there is a wide gap between the views of the Political Class and Mainstream voters. By a 58% to 13% margin, the Political Class believes a high-speed rail system would do more to create jobs. However, by a 68% to 20% margin, Mainstream voters believe that cutting government spending is the better path to job creation.
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The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on February 10-11, 2011 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.
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