Industry-Funded Polls Back Crypto Message: They Have Enough Voters to Make a Splash

11/01/2024 02:23

The latest crypto election poll illustrates — according to its industry sponsor — that single-issue crypto voters exist. That's a point the industry has been seeking to score for months, and its potential ramifications in future Washington policy discussions could run deep.

The latest in a series of election polls purchased by industry groups produced the answers they wanted to hear, that some number of voters say they'll make decisions with crypto top-of-mind.
With the statistical grains of salt the survey methods require, the results do broadly indicate increased crypto interest among U.S. voters.

The crypto industry's new online survey was fielded with an aim to demonstrate such voters exist, according to the highly pointed question asked of respondents. While the sample size of likely voters was small and margin of error wide, the Paradigm-funded survey reported that 5% of those questioned said they're digital-asset voters before all other issues.

Whether or not that number demonstrates the honest sentiment of those voters, it indicates that some people in America are willing to at least say they're dedicated crypto voters. In a race as potentially tight as the one between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, any block of voters could tip the balance.

The poll emerging this week from investment firm Paradigm is the first to ask the question in such a focused (albeit potentially leading) way:

"Would you say you are a single-issue crypto voter, in that government policy on crypto is the most important policy you consider when selecting a candidate for office?"

As Paradigm's Justin Slaughter and Dominique Little noted in a blog post on their poll, "Five percent of voters identify themselves as single-issue crypto voters, and crypto owners could easily be the margin of victory or defeat in this seemingly razor-thin election."

The caveats are many, including that Paradigm's hired survey firm, Dynata, tapped a limited number of 1,000 people and applied weighting to the responses to mold the results into something that better reflects the U.S. electorate. The margin of error is stated at 3.5% overall, but that necessarily rises as subsets of those surveyed are more closely analyzed, which was the case for that central question. The survey only asked the single-issue question of the 20% of people who said they had crypto investments, and since a quarter of those said yes, that their crypto enthusiasm made them single-issue voters, that comes out to 5% of the overall survey.

If the resulting 5% number were an accurate snapshot of voters, crypto enthusiasts almost certainly would decide the national outcome, which would cement the case that the industry has earned a significant sphere of influence in Washington. Putting aside that veracity of the number, though, the poll at least suggests a group of voters who are highly motivated on crypto issues – a scenario that could put politicians on-notice about digital assets policy matters as they come up for consideration in Washington against next year.

As with other industry polls, this one also suggested that being younger, male and a minority made respondents more likely to cheer for crypto, and answers compared with previous surveys seemed to demonstrate the Republican Party was increasingly seen as the stronger pro-crypto party. This week's poll also aligns closely with one earlier this month — paid for by the Digital Chamber — that suggested an even bigger 16% of voters considered digital assets as a prominent factor in their choices, though that online survey was also small with a relatively high potential error margin.

All of the industry-backed polling and also the campaign-finance efforts led by the Fairshake political action committee have the same goal in mind: Getting crypto-friendly policy in the U.S. The more that politicians feel beholden to crypto contributions or threatened by crypto voters, the more likely they are to act.