Bipartisan endorsements fail to move public support for COVID relief packages
By Zachary L. Hertz, Aadhya Shivakumar, and Emma Winey
On February 5, Congress backed President Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus package, the American Rescue Plan. Though costly, the Biden Administration argues that it meets the needs of the moment and will provide crucial, immediate relief to Americans across the country. One heavily debated component to Biden’s plan is the proposal for direct payments of $1,400.
Some critics see $1,400 as a deviation from Biden’s promise of $2,000 direct payments if Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff won the Georgia runoffs. “We have to deliver $2,000 survival checks to the American people. Not anything less,” tweeted Rep. Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
Meanwhile, while many Congressional Republicans opposed President Biden’s plan, ten Senate Republicans met with President Biden and Vice President Harris with a $600 billion counter-proposal package, which includes $1,000 direct payments. The Republican senators touted more than just a counter-proposal for Biden. Monday’s Oval Office negotiations signaled potential bipartisan cooperation, one of President Biden’s most fervent promises for his Presidency. A steadfast commitment to both unity and bipartisan collaboration were at the core of Biden’s platform on the campaign trail and remain a significant part of his White House messaging today. Therefore, the ongoing negotiations over the impending trillion-dollar stimulus package will prove to be a major test of President Biden’s claimed commitment to bipartisan cooperation.
While the stimulus debate and fight for bipartisanship in Washington trudges on, millions of American families continue to struggle to make ends meet during the crisis. Just last week, another 779,000 Americans filed new unemployment claims. Millions more continue to face financial insecurity. So, given the dire condition in which many Americans find themselves, how important do they view bipartisan agreement to be? Are Americans actually willing to sacrifice larger stimulus checks for bipartisan cooperation? The short answer: not really.
In an experiment for Data For Progress, we told respondents that Congress was considering a COVID-19 stimulus proposal supported by all 50 Democratic senators. Via random assignment, respondents were told that the proposal would include direct payments of either $600, $1,400, or $2,000. To analyze the salience of bipartisanship, respondents were then told that the plan had support from a randomly assigned number of Republican senators between 0 and 10. We asked respondents whether they would support or oppose the proposal.
Bipartisanship boosts support for stimulus, but not much
Net support for direct payments increased when respondents were told the policy had approval from more Republican senators. Notably, $1,400 direct payments had the strongest level of net support (72 percent) when respondents were told 4-6 Republican senators backed the policy. In comparison, when respondents were told only 0-3 Republican senators endorsed $1,400 direct payments, the policy had a net support of 55 percent, marking a difference of 17 percentage points.
The shifts in support for $600 and $2,000 direct payments were more muted. There was a difference of about eleven percentage points when the policy had support from 4-6 Republican senators and not 0-3 Republican senators. These differences are not statistically significant. Despite some marginal differences our findings indicate that, overall, increased bipartisan cooperation did not significantly affect Americans’ views on the stimulus packages. At all levels of cooperation from Senate Republicans, $1,400 and $2,000 direct payments had at least as much net support among Americans as $600 payments, displaying no evidence that people are willing to forgo higher checks for bipartisan cooperation on COVID relief. However, changes in net support varied noticeably by party identification.
Increased support from GOP senators significantly elevated support for $600 direct payments among Republicans
When analyzed by party identification, the impact of elevated bipartisan cooperation on net support for the packages was most notable among Republican respondents. Especially in the case of the proposal for $600 direct payments, Republicans expressed higher levels of net support for the stimulus bills when more Republican senators signed on in support of the policy. With 0-3 Senate Republicans endorsing the policy, net support for $600 direct payments was a mere 24 percent among Republican respondents. However, net support soared to nearly 70 percent when 7-10 Republican senators voiced their support for the policy. A similar pattern, though less extreme, occurred for $2,000 direct payments as well. We believe Republicans responding to partisan cues may potentially be driving this trend. Interestingly, bipartisan cooperation had no effect on support for $1,400 direct payments among Republicans. We hypothesize that since $1,400 direct payments are part of President Biden's proposed package, they have received the most media coverage in recent weeks. As a result, we suspect that respondents may have stronger priors on the policy. We also note that when respondents are told three or fewer Republican senators support a policy, Republicans prefer $1,400 direct payments over $600 or $2,000 direct payments. Crucially, this suggests that Biden’s plan has significant support from Republicans even if the legislation does not garner bipartisan votes.
GOP Senate support did not significantly affect Democratic support for larger checks
Net support for the stimulus package among Democrats did not vary substantially across the levels of Republican Senate support. Democratic support for $600 direct payments was at its highest at 82 percent with 0-3 Republican senators endorsing the policy. Net support among Democrats for $600 direct payments decreased considerably with greater Republican support, however, suggesting that reducing the size of direct payments to win Republican support is unpopular among Democrats. This trend was not noticeable among $1,400 and $2,000 direct payment proposals. Direct payments of $1,400 had the lowest level of support among proposals at 0-3 senators, at 65 percent; this support rose to 83 percent when 4-6 Republican senators voiced their support for the policy, and dipped by 3 percentage points at 7-10 Republican senators. Similarly, net support for $2,000 direct payments increased slightly with endorsements from 4-6 Republican senators, and decreased by 5 percentage points with 7-10 Republican senators in support of the policy. Overall, support among Democrats does not show noticeable variation across levels of Republican support, with Democratic respondents seemingly prioritizing larger stimulus checks over bipartisanship.
Regardless of bipartisanship, President Biden’s proposed $1,400 payments saw highest net support
Overall, when controlling for votes from Senate Republicans, $1,400 direct payments had the highest level of net support among Americans with 62 percent in favor of the policy. Notably, we observe this strongest level of support for the direct payment amount that President Biden has proposed in the American Rescue Plan. Net support for $2,000 direct payments lagged slightly behind net support for $1,400 payments at 58 percent, a difference of four percentage points. Direct payments of $600 had the lowest amount of overall net support, only garnering 55 percent favorability. While net support for $600 direct payments was substantially lower than $1,400 and $2,000 direct payments, the difference was not statistically significant.
Conclusion
Despite the prevalent discussions among Washington lawmakers over the need for bipartisanship, our research indicates that bipartisan cooperation on proposed stimulus packages did not have a statistically significant impact on overall support for the policies among American adults. Though Republican respondents tended to favor direct payments when more Republican senators backed the policy, this trend was likely driven by respondents following partisan cues. Notably, we did not observe this trend for $1,400 direct payments, suggesting that Biden’s American Rescue Plan has considerable support from Republican voters even though Republican senators have failed to sign on to the bill. We also find that Democrats do not support reducing the size of direct payments even if doing so garners support from across the aisle.
Our findings are in line with current research suggesting that while voters respond to bipartisan framing around legislation, there is nearly the same reward for policies passed with a single supporter from the opposition as policies that win over dozens of opposition senators. These findings may suggest that Democrats indeed have a mandate to govern and should remain unfettered in the pursuit of their legislative goals.
Zachary L. Hertz (@ZacharyLHertz) is a Research Associate at the Tufts Public Opinion Lab.
Aadhya Shivakumar (@AadhyaShiv) is a junior majoring in Political Science and Psychology at Tufts University.
Emma Winey (@EWiney8) is a junior majoring in political science at Tufts University.
Survey Methodology
This experiment was included as part of the Data for Progress COVID-19 tracking poll, fielded each week using respondents recruited via Lucid. Post-stratification weights are implemented to make the sample nationally representative of American adults by gender, age, region, education, race, and the interaction of education and race. The data are also weighted to match vote shares from the 2020 Presidential election. The margin of error is ± 3 percentage points.