A majority of Republican voters oppose federal spending cuts to areas such as healthcare, the environment, and social welfare programs, according to a new poll.
The poll from The Hill and HarrisX asked registered voters to indicate whether they wanted to increase spending, decrease spending, or keep spending the same on 19 budget areas.
Roughly a quarter of Republican respondents said they wanted to reduce spending on environmental protection. The majority said they wanted to keep spending at current levels, and another 25% said they wanted to increase funding, according to the poll.
Twenty-two percent of Republican respondents said they supported cutting unemployment spending, while 21% said they backed reductions in State Department funding.
The survey found that Republicans were most interested in budget cuts to foreign aid. Nearly half said they supported these reductions, while 38% said they wanted to keep spending the same and 15% wanted to spend more.
Republicans had the least interest in cuts to veterans benefits, crime prevention, infrastructure, anti-terorrism and the military, with less than 10% supporting budget reductions to each of these areas.
Democrats were even less enthusiastic about budget cuts, according to the poll. The most popular spending reduction among Democrats was to the military, with 25 percent approval.
The poll was conducted among an online panel of 1,001 registered voters earlier this month and had a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points.
