Nearly three in five American voters, or 57%, support the releases from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) as a means to lower domestic gasoline prices, a new Morning Consult/Politico survey found on Wednesday.
70% of Democrats and 48% of Republicans support the SPR releases.
The Biden Administration is in the process of releasing 180 million barrels from the SPR by the end of this year and is considering further releases in its efforts to bring down gasoline prices ahead of the midterm election on November 8.
Other measures to reduce gasoline prices have even more support, according to the survey conducted at the end of last week among a representative sample of 2,005 registered voters. For example, a ban on price gouging is the most popular measure among voters, with 76% of all voters approving it.
The survey also found that among several measures to reduce gasoline prices, Republicans have high levels of support for boosting U.S. crude oil supply, while Democrats favor the targeting of oil companies. Republicans are most supportive of domestic supply policies, such as asking domestic producers to pump more oil (77%) and opening up public lands for drilling (76%).
Democrats, on the other hand, support very much going after companies by banning price gouging and asking oil majors to lower prices. Four in 5 Democrats support this measure, according to the survey.
The least popular measure among all voters is the U.S. asking producers such as Iran, Iraq, and Venezuela to pump more oil, with support from only 46% of voters, including 36% of Republicans and 58% of Democrats.
Meanwhile, 83% of likely U.S. voters are concerned about the high gasoline and home heating fuel prices, according to the latest Rasmussen Reports nationwide survey from last week. According to the poll, 46% say President Biden has done a poor job in energy policy, and 38% deem the policy good or excellent. Among likely Republican voters, 72% say Biden has done a poor job of handling energy policy, compared to 20% who rate his job in the sector as excellent or good.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. More