Poll reports support for legalised online gambling remains stable

Yet another contradictory US poll on legalised online gambling surfaced this week, with the latest Fairleigh Dickinson University PublicMind survey claiming that only 27 percent of respondents support the legalisation of online gambling in the 47 states that have not already legalised.

Reporting on the poll, the Associated Press news agency notes that although only New Jersey, Nevada and Delaware currently allow Internet gambling, at least 10 other states are considering whether to legalise.

Krista Jenkins, the poll’s director and a professor of political science at the university told the news agency: “Right now online gambling looks to be a long shot in the court of public opinion.”

The poll found that 65 percent of respondents are not closely following news about Internet gambling. But when asked if they favour or oppose allowing casinos to run online gambling for people in their states, 63 percent said they were opposed, with just 27 percent supporting the idea.

Prof. Jenkins said the numbers are largely unchanged from when similar questions were asked in 2012 and 2010.

Democrats are more disposed toward legalisation than Republicans, the poll showed; 63 percent of Democrat respondents were in favour of legalisation vs. 32 percent of Republicans. Respondents who prefer independent politics tended to lean toward the Democrat’s point of view on legalisation.

Young people were significantly more supportive of legalisation, with 65 percent of the millennial generation and over half of Gen Xers (56 percent) in favour, compared with fewer than half (48 percent) of baby boomers and around a third (36 percent) of the World War II generation.

The nationwide poll asked 1,151 adults ages 18 and older who reside in the United States for their opinion via telephone, with both landline and cellphones called from April 21-27. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.

Related and similar