News & Politics
New Yorkers like public matching funds program
A new poll found that 64% of likely voters support the small donor matching program and 89% believe wealthy donors have more influence in politics than ordinary voters

New York voters are concerned about the influence of wealthy political donors and support the state's public matching funds program. Image Depot Pro via Getty Images
A new poll from Data for Progress and Citizen Action of New York shared exclusively with City & State found that New Yorkers like the state’s fledgling public campaign finance system and are worried about the impact of big money in politics.
In a survey of 1,067 likely voters conducted between July 1 and July 11, 64% of respondents said they somewhat or strongly supported the small donor matching program that state candidates used for the first time last year. The margin of error was 3 percentage points.
After a brief description of the program’s rules, Democrats offered the highest level of support, with about two-thirds saying they backed it. And even though Republicans had the lowest level of support, a majority of 57% polled still said they approved of the program.
That support dropped when likely voters were presented with statements in favor and in opposition to public campaign financing, though a majority still backed the program. After being told that some argue taxpayer money should not be used for political campaigns, total support dropped to 58% of those polled. While backing from Democrats changed fairly minimally, among independents and Republicans it fell more sharply.
Still, 56% of likely voters surveyed – including 67% of Democrats and 44% of Republicans – said that their current state representatives should utilize the matching funds program. And a strong majority said that the state should continue providing sufficient funding to continue the program.
Whether or not they supported the public matching funds program, 78% of likely voters said they were either somewhat or very concerned about the influence of big money in New York politics, while only 7% said they were not concerned at all. A whopping 89% of respondents said that wealthy donors have more influence in politics than average voters, an overwhelming majority that held true across party lines, and 66% said they believed that state lawmakers should prioritize minimizing the influence of wealthy donors. A variety of proposed campaign finance reforms to achieve that and increase transparency polled broadly well among likely voters.
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