Voters in Key Swing States Are More Likely To Choose Candidates Who Support the HEROES Act

Executive Summary

Data For Progress and The Justice Collaborative Institute conducted a survey of likely voters in swing states for the November 2020 Presidential and U.S. Senate election to gauge support for the HEROES Act, which The House passed on May 15th and is currently pending before the Senate. The HEROES Act was designed to extend many of the benefits that directly impact most Americans, and it had many key provisions, including: Giving most adults a second round of $1,200 checks; providing $1 trillion dollars to city and state governments to stabilize their budgets; investing in a contact tracing and testing program to combat coronavirus; expanding SNAP benefits; providing $200 billion in housing assistance; and investing $100 billion in education.

There is concern that support for the HEROES Act is concentrated among progressives and in states that are Democrat strongholds. If this were the case, then Democrat and Republican Senators and Senate candidates in key swing states could suffer electorally for supporting the HEROES Act. The same is true for key Presidential swing states. To test this theory, our research focused exclusively on voters in two sets of states: the key presidential battleground states and the key U.S. Senate battleground states. These states, which exclude progressive population centers such as California and New York, lean significantly more conservative than the country as a whole.

Our research shows that voters in swing states strongly support the passage of the HEROES Act, and that voters would be more likely to support a candidate for the U.S. Senate knowing that the person supports the HEROES Act. Nearly four in five voters believe that the next round of stimulus should provide at least the same amount of support that the HEROES Act provides, if not more.