Poll: Americans Lean Toward Obama Jobs Bill
A plurality of Americans want their member of Congress to vote for a jobs bill similar to the one President Obama proposed in a speech to a joint session of Congress last week, according to a new Gallup poll released late Wednesday.
Forty-five percent of respondents told Gallup they want their member of Congress to vote for the plan, while 32 percent want their member to vote against it. Democrats want their members to vote for it by a 70-to-9 margin. Republicans are largely against it, 19 percent to 60 percent. Among independents, a plurality wants their member to vote for the plan, 44 percent to 32 percent, but 24 percent had no opinion.
Gallup's interviewers did not provide any information about the plan to respondents, and, according to the poll, not many respondents are that familiar with the plan's contents. Just 22 percent said they were following the news about Obama's jobs bill "very closely," while 34 percent said they were following it "somewhat closely." A combined 43 percent said they were not following news about the plan too closely or at all.
But while Americans are leaning toward supporting the legislation, they are not hopeful about its effects on the overall unemployment problem in the country. A Bloomberg News poll released earlier Wednesday that described some elements of the plan to its respondents showed that 51 percent of Americans believe the plan will not help lower the unemployment rate; only 40 percent think that it will.
The Gallup poll was conducted Sept. 12-13, surveying 1,010 adults. The margin of error is +/- 3.1 percent.

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