Poll: Three-fourths of voters worried about deficit

Seventy-five percent of voters said they are very or somewhat worried about the national deficit, a new Hill-HarrisX poll finds.

By contrast, 25 percent of registered voters in the Dec. 30- Jan. 3 survey said they are not very or not at all worried. 

Twenty-eight percent of voters said they are very worried while 47 percent said they are somewhat worried about the national deficit.

Sixteen percent of respondents said they are not very concerned about the country’s deficit while 9 percent said they are not worried at all. 

“The national deficit is a sleeper issue while the COVID crisis continues, but has all the markings of a issue that could strategically be elevated by Republicans in the next presidential cycle,” Dritan Nesho, CEO and chief pollster at HarrisX, told Hill.TV.

“Much depends on how well the economy rebounds from the current crisis and whether the Biden administration balloons or reigns in the deficit, and what the real-world impact of that is on inflation, the price of consumer goods, interest rates, and general financial market jitters,” Nesho added.

The survey follows a bipartisan effort to increase coronavirus relief payments to as high as $2,000.

However, the effort has been stymied by Senate Republicans citing concerns over the national deficit.

The deficit reached a record $3.1 trillion according to the Treasury Department’s final monthly statement for 2020. 

The new Hill-HarrisX poll was conducted online among 3,787 registered voters. It has a margin of error of  1.59 percentage points. 

—Gabriela Schulte