Voters Strongly Reject Government Role in Ensuring Neighborhood Diversity

Voters strongly agree with President Trump’s decision to end an Obama-era regulation intended to push low-income housing into more affluent neighborhoods in the name of racial diversity.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 83% of Likely U.S. Voters say the federal government should not play a role in deciding where people can live. Just 10% disagree. (To see survey question wording, click here.) 

Sixty-five percent (65%) still say it is not the government’s job to diversify neighborhoods in America so that people of different income levels live together. But that’s down from 83% when Rasmussen Reports first asked this question in mid-2015 as the Obama administration prepared to release its new housing regulations. Twenty-three percent (23%) now say that diversifying neighborhoods is a government role, up from eight percent (8%) five years ago.

Democrats are stronger advocates of efforts by the government to diversify neighborhoods than Republicans and voters not affiliated with either major party are. But even among voters in former President Obama’s party, 56% say it’s not the government’s job to diversify neighborhoods, a view shared by 73% of Republicans and 68% of unaffiliated voters.

Little changed from the previous survey is the 40% of all voters who say the racial or ethnic make-up of the neighborhood was important in deciding where they live now, with 19% who say it was Very Important. Fifty-nine percent (59%) say the racial and ethic make-up of the neighborhood was not important to their decision, including 28% who say it was Not At All Important.

For blacks (63%), the racial or ethnic make-up of their neighborhood was much more important than it was to whites (35%) and other minority voters (44%).

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The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted August 2-3, 2020 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.

The economy has been hard hit by the coronavirus crisis, but confidence in the housing market remains high.

Voters who say the racial or ethnic make-up of their home neighborhood was Very Important are evenly divided over whether it’s the government’s job to diversify neighborhoods.

Voters under 40 feel much more strongly than their elders that the government should ensure that people of different income levels live together.

Twenty percent (20%) of blacks and 21% of other minority voters feel the federal government should play a role in deciding where people can live, but just six percent (6%) of whites agree. Seventy-one percent (71%) of whites say it is not the government’s job to diversify neighborhoods, compared to 52% of blacks and 53% of other minority voters.

Interestingly, voters who earn $100,000 or more a year are more supportive of government neighborhood diversity efforts than those who earn less.

As the country slowly emerges from the coronavirus pandemic, 56% of Americans have a positive view of their personal finances, according to the latest Rasmussen Reports Consumer Spending Update. Just 12% rate their personal finances as poor.

Critics of Trump’s decision see it as a move to attract white suburban voters, but Americans believe blacks are more racist than whites, Hispanics and Asians in this country. 

Additional information from this survey and a full demographic breakdown are available to Platinum Members only.

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