Financial Reform Public Opinion Survey Results: Massachusetts

The Pew Financial Reform Project[1] commissioned the bipartisan team of The Mellman Group and Voter/Consumer Research, Inc. to conduct a survey of 600 likely 2010 general election voters in Massachusetts. Interviews were conducted by telephone April 19-21, 2010.[2]

Survey key findings include:

• Massachusetts voters believe Wall Street reform is a top priority and they want Congress to act now.
  • 63% of voters believe it is more important for Congress to pass financial reform now, compared with 30% who think that Congress and the President have more important work to do. 
• Voters view financial reform as critical to economic recovery. 
  • 71% say that financial reform will "help ensure a stable financial system, helping to grow the economy and prevent future job loss," compared to 20% who say that reform "will raise the cost of doing business, hurting the economy and forcing businesses to lay off workers." 
• Massachusetts voters support financial reform and its key elements. 
  • 75% of voters support a comprehensive financial reform plan - such as the one being considered in Congress - that includes, among others, key elements described below. 

Further, each of these key elements received overwhelming support: 

• 86% favor establishing an early warning system that monitors the financial system for signs of trouble. 
• 84% favor ending "Too Big To Fail" by ensuring that large financial firms that fail can do so without taking down lots of other businesses with them. 
• 84% favor increasing transparency in financial markets by requiring financial firms to tell regulators and investors more about the firms' activities. 
• 90% favor protecting consumers from harmful business practices by providing better information to make decisions about financial products and services. 
• Members of Congress who work to enact reform could benefit at the polls in November. 
  • 55% say they would feel more favorable toward their Member of Congress if he or she voted for the described plan, compared to 13% who would feel less favorable.[3]

Pew is no longer active in this line of work, but for more information, visit the main Pew Financial Reform page.

NOTES

[1] The Pew Charitable Trusts established the Financial Reform Project to bring nonpartisan fact-based research and analysis to the financial reform debate.

[2] The margin of error for the full registration based sample is +/- 4%, but higher for subgroups.

[3] This response is part of a "split sample" question series where each respondent was randomly assigned into one of two equal subgroups, with one subgroup receiving the question and answer choices as worded above and the other subgroup receiving a slight variant. Please visit our Web site for the full results.