Anyone who’s ever participated in a Field Day at school knows there’s nothing worse than being stuck in a three-legged race with the classmate you dislike most. And right now, Congress is trying to tie us even tighter to Israel and take the scissors off the table, all while our “partner” keeps dragging us in the wrong direction.

Our polling has consistently found that voters want to end U.S. aid to Israel. But a new provision of the NDAA would make the U.S. and Israeli militaries even more integrated, and potentially shield the relationship from Congressional oversight.

In our poll with Demand Progress and the IMEU Policy Project, 61% of voters oppose a military authorization bill that would deepen the integration of Israeli weapons companies into the Pentagon at a level higher than any other country. This includes 78% of Democrats and 73% of Independents.

Additionally, we find that 52% of voters agree with members of Congress who voted in July to cut $3.3 billion in taxpayer funding for weapons to the Israeli military, and 51% also believe that Israel benefits more from the relationship between the U.S. and Israel.

Anyone who’s signed up for a gym membership knows what happens when you get way too deep into an arrangement to cancel. The last thing the U.S. needs or wants is to be further integrated with a country that violates our human rights standards and pulls us into unnecessary wars in the Middle East.

Read the full poll here.

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Here are some other highlights from DFP this week:

what the flock?

Do you ever get the sense that you’re being… watched?

No, not in a Truman Show kind of way. Besides, no one cares to watch a TV show of you driving to Trader Joe’s, buying a bag of frozen dumplings, and then making those dumplings in the air fryer, repeat over and over for every episode.

We’re talking about the real kind of mass surveillance. Over the past year, public outrage has built over an increase in security cameras being installed across the United States — specifically, automated license plate readers owned by a company called Flock Safety.

The company has installed 120,000 cameras in every U.S. state but Alaska, snapping photos of each car that drives by, regardless of whether the driver is a suspect in a crime or subject to a warrant (yes, they probably saw you make that illegal U-turn last week, you monster).

While the company defends its program as a tool to assist in criminal investigations, critics call it a threat to privacy and open to abuse. Police officers have used the cameras to stalk their ex-partners, track immigrants as part of ICE investigations, and hunt down women who have had abortions. Our tax dollars at work!

Our new polling finds that Flock cameras really are breaking through to voters — around two-thirds of voters have heard of Flock cameras. Overall, voters view the technology unfavorably by a -19-point margin.

And because we live in 2026, of course, Flock cameras use AI as part of their technology — like everything else these days. Did we really need to add AI to toothbrushes or air fryers?

We’re in an important moment for public opinion, as Americans turn against Big Tech, data centers, AI companies, and now Flock cameras. What’s clear is that Americans are getting tired of new technologies being forced on us against our will and without our say, and that national mood could have a big impact on political messaging in the upcoming midterms and next presidential election. We’ll be here to track it all (in a polling way, not a Flock way).

View the full crosstabs here.

still at war, since you asked

Six months into the Iran War, voters are only becoming more certain that Operation Epic Fury is an epic failure, which we could have predicted from the start when Trump named the operation something that sounded more like a Monster Energy flavor than a serious military campaign.

In April of 2026, two months into the Iran War, 52% of voters said the U.S. was not accomplishing its goals in Iran. Today, that number has risen to 60%.

While Trump is busy renaming bodies of water and threatening to tear down the Kennedy Center, this unpopular war rages on — threatening American servicemembers abroad and further raising the cost of living at home. It’s safe to speak for most normal people when we say we wish we didn’t know what the Strait of Hormuz is.

Read the full poll here.

DFP In The News

The Hill: ‘Shocking’ fake poll firm puts industry under the microscope: ‘Unfortunately not surprising’ (quote from our executive director, we did not run the fake poll)

Newsweek: Polls Show 5 Democratic Socialist Positions Have Traction With Republicans

The Hill: The Senate races that will define the Democratic Party

On Social

Meme of the Week

To our dear Alaska readers — if you booked an optometrist appointment after voting in Tuesday’s election, we promise you aren’t having double vision. Yes, there really were two candidates named Dan Sullivan on your ballot, both running for Senate. One being the incumbent senator, and another being a different guy also named Dan Sullivan.

And this isn’t the first time Alaskans have had two Dan Sullivans on their ballot. When Sen. Sullivan was first elected in 2014, a third Dan Sullivan, then the mayor of Anchorage, was on the same primary ballot running for lieutenant governor. Is there something in the glacier water in Alaska? It’s Dan Sullivans all the way down! (Or is it Dans Sullivan?)

We went into the field in Alaska right before the primary (making sure to watch out for grizzlies). And our findings closely matched the primary results — we found Mary Peltola with a six-point lead against incumbent Dan Sullivan, nearly the same as her lead against Sullivan in Tuesday’s election as of today. And in case you were wondering, the other Dan Sullivan placed third.

Like voters nationwide, Alaska voters are increasingly focused on the affordability crisis: 34% name the economy, jobs, and cost of living as their top issue, and worries over affording gas, utilities, groceries, healthcare, and housing have risen across the board since last year.

And nearly 3 in 4 Alaska voters (73%) support pausing new data center development until the state establishes regulations.

It’s abundantly clear now that Eddington was ahead of its time. Can you blame Alaska voters for wanting to prioritize energy affordability and regulating these gargantuan eyesores before they triple utility rates?

Read the full poll here.

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Here are some other highlights from DFP this week:

rise and grind 😤

Sometimes in life, you have to tell your loved ones the hard truths. And sometimes that means telling your little brother that no matter how many dropshipping companies he tries to open on the TikTok Shop, he’s not going to become the next Warren Buffett.

In our new poll, we tested voter perceptions of extreme wealth, including billionaires and trillionaires (a title which Elon Musk recently gained, and then promptly lost. Send your thoughts and prayers).

A majority of voters say they are more likely to become homeless than a millionaire (59% to 33%) or billionaire (64% to 25%).

We also find that a majority of voters (53%) view billionaires as earning their wealth through exploiting workers and/or consumers, while 38% attribute their wealth to hard work and innovation.

Slightly more than half of voters (53%) see the existence of billionaires as a sign of a dysfunctional economy that distributes wealth to the very top instead of among the working class, compared with 37% who see their existence as a sign of a healthy, functional economy that rewards innovation and private enterprise.

Call it boot-strapping or call it boot-licking, at least a third of Americans are still sympathetic to billionaires. Or maybe they’re just Taylor, Beyoncé, or Rihanna stans. But most voters clearly see billionaires as a symptom of an economy that stopped working for everyone else.

Read the full poll here.

the House always wins

From the rise of sports betting to the prevalence of congressional stock trading, it’s becoming difficult to name an institution where the people running it aren’t also profiting off it. What’s next — your best friend taking the under on your new relationship? Your landlord putting your security deposit in the market and then taking a real hard look at the scuff on the wall?

When it comes to our politicians, 59% of voters say that politicians should not benefit financially from their positions in office under any circumstances. And voters view almost every instance of politicians profiting from their role in government as a form of corruption.

An overwhelming majority of voters (84%) say trading government favors for kickbacks is a form of corruption, while 77% say the same of politicians receiving direct donations to their personal accounts from both lobbyists and corporations. Voters are split when it comes to politicians investing in the stock market. The only tested circumstance that most voters view as not corrupt is receiving direct campaign donations from everyday voters (60% say this is not corruption).

We also find that 65% of voters support adopting a policy that would prevent members of Congress from purchasing and trading stocks.

In today’s economy, there are so many ways for members of Congress to get their gambling fix in. Have they tried pulling Pokémon cards? A church raffle? Starting a Fantasy Football Caucus? As long as they stay off the prediction markets, we’re all good.

Read the full poll here.

DFP In The News

The American Prospect: FTC Says It Will Enforce Surveillance Pricing. It Won’t.

Zeteo: First Draft – EXCLUSIVE: Voters Oppose Netanyahu-Led Scheme to Integrate U.S. and Israeli Militaries

The New York Times: Mary Peltola Shakes Up Senate Campaign Staff Days Before Alaska Primary

Quartz: The data center backlash reaches Texas

The New Republic: Fish Are a Big Deal in This Senate Race

San Antonio Current: Climate change isn’t the new normal. What we’re experiencing now is just the beginning.

On Social

Meme of the Week

This one’s for the urbanists out there — all of you bike-loving freaks who dream about abolishing parking minimums, subscribe to several dozen transit YouTubers, and have ruined multiple first dates by attempting to explain the definition of a “stroad.”

Building human-centered urban development isn’t just good for safety, the economy, and your ability to walk home from the bar drunk at 2 am instead of wasting money on an Uber. It’s also good for the climate, which is why policymakers are increasingly exploring investments in “green urbanism.”

Green urbanism includes a range of infrastructure and planning strategies to help communities prepare for extreme weather events, like heat waves, flooding, and drought. It aims to keep our cities and towns sustainable for the long term, through measures like transit-oriented development and energy-efficient buildings.

These policies include local energy-efficiency initiatives such as modernizing public buildings with energy-efficient technologies (79% support) and adopting energy-efficiency requirements for new construction (78% support).

They also include community planning and transit proposals, like expanding sidewalk coverage and creating more pedestrian-friendly streets (80% support) and expanding bus services and providing discounted fares (77% support).

Voters say limited funding is the biggest obstacle keeping their community from investing more in environmental sustainability, with 31% selecting it as the primary barrier. This is followed by a lack of political leadership (18%) and car dependence and limited public transportation (11%). Only 8% of respondents say environmental sustainability is not a major concern in their community.

For anyone reading this while sitting in 5 p.m. traffic… eyes on the road! But also, you deserve better-planned cities that prioritize your health and the Earth’s.

Read the full poll here.

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Here are some other highlights from DFP this week:

let’s go shopping; we’ll buy a handbag; we’ll buy an election; card declined

This year, corporations and outside interest groups dumped piles of money larger than Scrooge McDuck’s into Democratic primary campaigns. Now, with the general election looming, some analysts are already predicting spending to reach $10.8 billion over the cycle to support or oppose candidates across the ballot.

We’re not going to lie, we’re getting pretty sick of learning that something is the most ever in history. The hottest summer in history, the most expensive midterm election in history, the most Substacks launched in history…

But we digress. When it comes to corporate spending, our new poll finds that roughly 3 in 4 voters say that large corporations hold too much power over our elections through their spending, while just 22% say that corporations should be able to spend their money however they want.

Of course, we all remember Citizens United, where the Supreme Court ruled corporations are people and can spend unlimited money in politics. But you may not have heard about the shitty sequel that came out earlier this summer (and no, we’re not talking about Supergirl or the live-action Moana).

In June, the Supreme Court ruled that political parties can coordinate with candidates and spend unlimited money doing it. Seventy-one percent of voters say that decision will lead to more corruption, because wealthy donors will simply route unlimited money through the parties. Just 21% buy the argument that this means stronger candidates and better campaigns.

When we spend an irresponsible amount of money, it’s because we bought a KitchenAid stand mixer or a sewing machine we only used once. When billionaires do it, it’s because they bought an election and undermined the foundation of our democracy.

View the full crosstabs here.

a war. a man. a trick.

We’re now six months into the war in Iran, and it seems like Trump’s plan to get the troops home from the Middle East may take even longer than it took Odysseus.

While Trump is trying and failing to put his “art of the deal” into action (i.e., reversing all the damage he’s caused), new Data for Progress polling finds that a majority of voters — including 67% of Independents — think the U.S. is not accomplishing its goals in Iran.

Additionally, a majority of voters (55%), including 62% of Independents, think that the U.S. should stop taking military action in Iran entirely.

In fairness to Odysseus, his plans were blown off course by Poseidon. Trump appears to be less distracted by the gods and more distracted by his White House remodeling.

View the full crosstabs here.

DFP In The News

The Guardian: Democrats’ ‘climate hushing’ prompts activists to turn up the volume

NOTUS: The Struggle of Being a No-Corporate-PAC-Money Democrat

New York Times: What Was on the Minds of Michigan Voters? Many Cited the Economy and Trump.

HuffPost: Establishment Dems Rally Behind El-Sayed After Supporting AIPAC-Backed Opponent

On Social

Meme of the Week

You know that feeling when you’re going through customs and you start getting really anxious for no reason? Did you actually throw away that apple you were eating in the taxi? Is your wooden souvenir magnet technically considered lumber? Oh god, maybe $10,000 in cash magically appeared in your carry-on without realizing it…

Meanwhile, there are Democrats strolling through primary elections with millions of dollars in dark money in their back pocket and acting like they have nothing to hide.

This year, outside spending money has broken through in Democratic primaries like never before. Already, cryptocurrency, AI, Big Tech, and online betting corporations have collectively spent $294 million in political races this cycle (unrelatedly, all four would prefer not to be taxed or regulated).

And in this Tuesday’s Michigan primary, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its affiliates have spent close to $30 million backing Representative Haley Stevens against Abdul El-Sayed, their largest ever investment in a single race.

To take a deeper look at how sources of outside funding affect candidate viability, we conducted a conjoint survey experiment analyzing how funding sources impact support for candidates in a general election matchup.

We find that, compared with a Democratic candidate who rejects outside PAC money, Democratic candidates who take money from AIPAC, AI companies, cryptocurrency companies, and pharmaceutical companies perform significantly worse against a Republican candidate.

Of course, results in a survey experiment may not translate directly to a real-world ballot booth. But these results do indicate that a Democratic candidate taking money from unpopular groups could risk an underperformance against a Republican in a general election.

Luckily, for candidates worried about these results, there’s a really easy solution — just don’t take the money. It’s easy! Every day, millions of Americans wake up and go about their business, all without taking a single dollar from either AIPAC or an AI PAC. No consultant required.

Read the full poll here.

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Here’s another highlight from DFP this week:

unreliable narrators

After the deaths of Renée Good and Alex Pretti earlier this year, the Trump administration made it a goal to keep their mass deportation agenda off the front page of the news. But as it turns out, when you’re as stupid and incompetent as these guys are, it’s pretty hard to enact a violent crackdown on immigrant communities and do it quietly.

Earlier this month, ICE agents in Houston shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old Mexican immigrant and construction worker. Six days later, in Biddeford, Maine, agents killed Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 25-year-old delivery driver from Colombia.

After these shootings, we asked voters whether they trust ICE to give the public accurate information about what happens during its enforcement operations. A majority of respondents (55%), including 84% of Democrats and 60% of Independents, say they do not trust ICE to provide accurate information.

We also informed respondents about conflicting accounts in the Houston shooting, between eyewitnesses and the ICE agents. A majority of voters (54%) say they trust the witnesses more to provide an accurate account of what happened, while 36% trust the ICE officers more. Independent voters trust the witnesses more by a +37-point margin.

Trump wants these incidents to stay out of the headlines, and this data shows why. The public no longer trusts ICE’s credibility, and is seeing this “mass deportation” campaign for what it is — an unaccountable, unjust campaign of state violence.

Read the full poll here.

DFP In The News

New York Times: Democratic Socialists Are Winning Big. Now They Want Action.

Bloomberg: Big Oil’s Legal Defenses Just Took Two Big Hits

Politico: Sunrise co-founder bets on data centers in House bid

Austin-American Statesman: The bill for Texas’ data center boom is coming due. Who will pay?

The New Republic: Why Epstein Survivors Aren’t Impressed With Blanche’s Olive Branch

Bloomberg: Home Insurance Is the Stealth Political Issue of 2026

On Social

Meme of the Week

The Data for Progress Newsletter will never be paywalled. But your support allows us to do more — democratizing access to public opinion research, bridging gaps between organizers and policymakers, and shaping the future of a winning progressive agenda. If you enjoy what we do, consider becoming a paid subscriber.

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Somehow, Lana Del Ray was feeling Young and Beautiful during those “hot summer nights” in “mid July.” Good for her, because we’re feeling more sweaty and swampy these days.

Rising global temperatures are causing more frequent and severe extreme heat, droughts, and flooding across the United States. Earlier this month, a dangerous heat wave with temperatures of 103–105 degrees Fahrenheit prompted heat alerts across multiple states.

And the heat isn’t just impacting the United States — even Europe saw record-breaking temperatures this summer. Maybe this will be the year that the Europeans finally “discover” iced coffee? We’ll even let them take unearned credit for being the first.

All jokes aside, the rising heat is an incredibly serious problem for our environment, health, and pocketbooks. It didn’t need to be this way, and voters are recognizing that climate change has contributed to these extreme temperatures.

In our new poll, we find that a majority of voters (61%) believe that extreme weather events — like hurricanes, flash floods, droughts, and heat waves — have become more frequent over the past five years.

Around two-thirds of respondents (67%) say climate change is making heat waves worse, including a plurality of Republicans.

Crucially, 88% of voters also favor policies in their state to better protect employees facing extreme heat risk in the workplace. Of course, these protections were already put in place on the federal level under the Biden administration, but the guy currently occupying the Oval Office let them expire. Apparently, extreme heat doesn’t matter when you have A/C in your golf cart.

Read the full poll here.

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Here are some other highlights from DFP this week:

prompt and circumstance

Remember when new technology used to be exciting? When we used to pore over our MySpace Top 8, when we would all pretend that 3D glasses didn’t give us headaches, when the funniest thing your phone could show you was the app that made it look like you were drinking a beer.

Nowadays, it seems like the only thing Silicon Valley has to offer us is a content plagiarism machine that’s going to take all our jobs. Their biggest selling point? It’s going to make them all really, really rich! Hooray! Let’s throw a party!

As Bernie Sanders often says, it’s not a radical idea to have companies and billionaires distribute the wealth they’ve created off our ideas and labor. And he has an idea to require AI companies to do just that — by creating an AI Sovereign Wealth Fund. The plan would require large AI companies to contribute 50% of their stock to a public fund, giving Americans a direct ownership stake in the future of AI development. More than half of voters (51%) support the proposal, for a net support of +18 points.

We also find strong support for policies to protect workers from AI displacement — including creating a new jobs training program for workers displaced by AI and establishing a public sector jobs program to employ Americans in roles such as building infrastructure.

Millennials got the housing crash; Gen Z gets our housing turned into a data center. Maybe this time, let’s make sure we actually hold the companies accountable for screwing with the economy and our futures.

Read the full poll here.


are we being gaslit?

Marketing works, folks. And we’re not just saying that as communications professionals who would really like to keep our jobs during the robot revolution.

A recent investigation from the Center for Climate Integrity shines new light on how natural gas producers have long known about the climate harms of methane — a powerful pollutant and the main component of natural gas — but manufactured and pushed the myth that natural gas is a “clean” climate solution anyway.

In our polling with CCI, we find that while natural gas greenwashing efforts have been noticeably effective, with half of survey respondents believing that natural gas is a clean energy source, voters strongly support accountability for natural gas suppliers.

And while it’s true that natural gas starts with 68% of voters rating it favorably, which is 68 points higher than the natural gas your dad produces after Thanksgiving dinner (We’re sorry. That joke was beneath us. No pun intended).

But voters become more critical of natural gas as they learn about its impacts on health and the environment — and would strongly support legal action to hold oil and gas corporations accountable for misleading them about the harms of natural gas.

Read the full poll here.

DFP In The News

The Guardian: Majority of US voters link extreme weather to climate crisis, study finds

Mother Jones: Trump Calls Climate Change a Hoax. Americans Aren’t Buying It.

The New Republic: The Ideas Factory

Common Dreams: What the Nation Can Learn From Seattle’s Fresh Bucks Program

Newsweek: How Bernie Sanders Finally Won

Alaska Public Media: Bycatch: What to know about the fish issue taking the spotlight in Alaska’s U.S. Senate race

On Social

Meme of the Week