By a margin of about two to one, a majority of Americans are willing to give up their personal privacy to help the U.S. government battle terrorism, according to a new poll.
Following the attacks in France this month and the growing threat of the Islamic State in the past 12 months, the public chooses security over privacy by 63 percent to 32 percent,
The Washington Post-ABC News poll finds.
The figures show a 6 percent increase from the 57 percent last year, when Americans became alarmed by the revelations from fugitive Edward Snowden that the National Security Agency was collecting mass phone and Internet data on the public.
In the new poll, there was very little difference on the privacy issue between Democratic and Republican voters, with around 7 out of 10 Americans from both parties believing that preventing terror threats is more important than personal privacy.
However, when it comes to Americans age 30 or younger, there is more division, with 48 percent in favor of security against 47 percent preferring privacy. The majority of people siding with terror investigation necessities quickly rises in people aged over 30, soaring to 75 percent for senior citizens, the poll revealed.
The findings also showed that, after the Paris attacks,
76 percent of Americans fear there will be a major terrorist attackin the United States, an increase of 5 percent over a similar question posed in a Post-ABC poll last October.
As for how President Barack Obama is dealing with the threat of terror, 47 percent approved of his performance, compared to 45 who didn’t, which is a slight uptick from his rating last month when 43 approved and 47 disapproved.
Along party lines, however, there was a major division, with just 18 percent of Republicans backing Obama while around 70 percent of Democrats gave him the thumbs up.
The Post-ABC poll on 1,003 adults was conducted Jan. 12-15 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
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