Fifty-one percent (51%) of U.S. voters now say Congress should end all federal funding of the controversial community organizing group ACORN.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 17% favor continued taxpayer support of the Association for Community Organizations for Reform Now. Thirty-two percent (32%) are not sure.

Among those who have been very closely following recent news stories about ACORN, which describes itself as “the nation’s largest grassroots community organization of low- and moderate-income people,” 80% think all federal funding should be ended.

Only 15% of voters now have even a somewhat favorable opinion of ACORN, while 67% have an unfavorable view of the group. Those figures include only three percent (3%) with a very favorable opinion and 47% with a very unfavorable view.

Eighty-five percent (85%) of Republicans, 73% of voters not affiliated with either major political party, and 44% of Democrats have an unfavorable view of ACORN.

Liberal voters are evenly divided—35% favorable and 38% unfavorable. Eighty-two percent (82%) of conservative voters give ACORN unfavorable marks along with 60% of political moderates.

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Fifty-seven percent (57%) of all voters also believe that the ongoing criminal investigations of ACORN in several states are primarily the result of illegal behavior on the organization’s part. Twenty percent (20%) say the investigations are politically motivated, and 23% are undecided.

The U.S. Census Bureau had been planning to use ACORN workers to ensure a more accurate count of the U.S. population in 2010, but 64% agree with the Census Bureau’s recent decision to end that relationship. Ten percent (10%) disagree with the bureau’s action, while 26% are not sure.

ACORN employees in several cities have been secretly videotaped advising a man and women how to set up a prostitution business that in at least one case included use of underage girls. ACORN has insisted the videos were illegally filmed and only represent the actions of a few bad employees. The group has launched its own internal investigation of the incidents. ACORN is also being investigated in a number of states for fraudulent voter registration in connection with last year’s election.

Critics have attempted to draw President Obama into the controversy because his campaign hired an ACORN affiliate to get out the vote during last year’s Democratic primaries. The Obama campaign says it did not use ACORN during the general election campaign.

The House on Thursday voted to end all federal funding of the group. Just 75 Congress members voted against the measure, all Democrats. The Senate on Monday voted 83 to 7 to end funding for the group.
Seventy-five percent (75%) of Republicans and 58% of unaffiliated voters say Congress should end all funding of ACORN. Only 24% of Democrats agree.

Seventy-three percent (73%) of conservative voters want ACORN funding halted. Among liberals, just 14% favor a stop to ACORN funding, while 39% are opposed and 48% are undecided.

Seven-out-of-10 voters (70%) say they are following recent news stories about ACORN at least somewhat closely, with 41% following very closely. Only eight percent (8%) say they aren’t following the news about ACORN at all.

In mid-October of last year, 45% said ACORN was trying to register voters illegally, but 25% disagreed.
At that time, ACORN boasted on its website that it had just concluded “the most successful voter registration drive in history with more than 1.3 million new voters registered in 21 states in time for the 2008 presidential election.” The majority of new voters, the group said, are “young, African-American, Latino, and low-income Americans – groups which are all historically underrepresented in elections.”

Opponents charged that ACORN was flooding voter registrars with fraudulent applications that could not be verified in time for the election in November, raising the possibility of substantial illegal voting.

To prevent illegal voting, 76% of voters believed last October that a person should be required to show photo identification at the polls before being allowed to vote.

Early this year, ACORN encouraged people in foreclosure to resist the law and refuse to leave their homes, but only 21% of Americans supported the idea.

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