Poll: 60 percent of voters support FCC’s net neutrality rules

A new poll has found that 60 percent of registered voters support the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) net neutrality rules, even as the agency’s current leadership is in the process of repealing them.

The survey from Politico and Morning Consult shows that 34 percent of respondents strongly support the rules, while 26 percent say they somewhat support the rules. Seventeen percent either strongly or somewhat oppose the rules and 23 percent either don’t know or have no opinion.

And the support for the regulations is shared across party lines. Sixty-one percent of voters who identify as Democrats are either strongly or somewhat in favor of the rules, and among Republicans that number is 59 percent.

{mosads}Republican FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has kicked off proceedings to get rid of the Obama-era rules by repealing the legal framework for them that reclassified internet providers as telecommunications services. The FCC is currently seeking public comment on the proposal.

The rules require ISPs to broadly treat all web traffic equally.

The poll asked respondents: “As you may know, net neutrality is a set of rules adopted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) which say Internet Service Providers (ISPs) such as Comcast, Time Warner, AT&T, and Verizon, cannot block, throttle or prioritize certain content on the Internet. Knowing this, do you support or oppose net neutrality?”

The poll surveyed 2,051 registered voters from June 15 to 19. It has a margin of error of 2 percentage points.