Pluralities of Democrats and Republicans Want Congress to Focus on Data Protection

Many US voters in a recent Morning Consult/Politico poll, including pluralities of both Democrats and Republicans, said they’d like to see the next Congress make it a top priority to pass measures that better protect consumer data, outweighing other more partisan concerns such as efforts to codify network neutrality and addressing allegations of political bias and censorship on social media.

The survey found that a 40 percent plurality of respondents, including 43 percent of Democrats and 37 percent of Republicans, said it was a top priority for the next Congress to pass legislation to better protect consumers’ online data. Thirty percent of respondents said the next Congress should make legislation protecting net neutrality a top priority, but the party splits were more drastic, with 40 percent of Democratic voters saying this should be a top priority for the next Congress, while less than a quarter (24 percent) of Republicans said the same thing, and a plurality of GOP voters said it should be an important but lesser priority.