Via Steve Benen, here is the new Gallup poll on the Employee Free Choice Act:
Surprisingly strong support among independents. Also keep in mind the question avoids a lot of the complexity in the debate but it does make clear the goal of the legislation; in my view, despite skipping over the controversy, your answer to the question of whether or not it should be easier or harder to organize unions more or less determines your response to EFCA. And it is certainly interesting that one-third of Republicans support the idea. The survey also shows, though, that about two-thirds of Americans have not been following the debate around the legislation. The results become more interesting when you break down support by how closely people are following the issue:
There are two ways to interpret these results. One, which conservatives will probably argue, is that those paying attention learn more about the critiques of the legislation and buy into them. But I'd say it's more likely that the people who are paying attention are those who have the most at stake in the debate, labor and business interests, and business interests are larger and also have a larger microphone. Those numbers also reflect the success of conservatives' disingenuous secret ballot argument and the fact that the anti-EFCA campaign is one of the main sources of work for conservative operatives. Ultimately, though, the results suggest that the debate is far from over, and that people who have yet to pay attention to the debate probably are persuadable in both directions, though their default lean is toward unions.
-- Tim Fernholz
