Crypto voters are likely to support a Democratic candidate for Congress, but said they would vote for former Republican President Donald Trump over President Joe Biden in 2024, according to a poll from the Crypto Council for Innovation.
The poll found that 41 percent of those voters would pick Biden, while 51 percent would select Trump as their next president, according to a December national survey polling 454 people by The Tarrance Group and Patinkin Research Strategies.
According to the poll released on Tuesday, 46 percent of crypto voters would pick Democrats for elections in the Senate and the House while 42 percent would select Republicans. About nine percent are undecided.
“Crypto voters are not just a niche group; they’re a diverse and influential group that could shape the 2024 election landscape,” said Brett Quick, head of government affairs for the crypto alliance, in a statement. “This underscores the need for nuanced, informed policy-making, since these priorities could very well tip the scales in closely contested races.”
Some lawmakers in Washington are pushing for bills to rein in the industry, including regulating stablecoins and cracking down on crypto’s use for illicit finance. Instrumental players including Senate Banking Chair Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio along with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y. face re-election in 2024.
Meanwhile, House Financial Services Committee Chair Patrick McHenry, who is viewed as being friendly toward crypto, announced last month that he would not seek re-election and will retire at the end of his current term in January 2025. All 435 House members are up for re-election in 2024.
A need for rules
The poll also found that 83 percent of crypto voters deciding between Biden and Trump “would prefer a candidate who ‘wants to write clear rules for cryptocurrency so that investors can continue to have choices, and the industry can continue to grow and create jobs.'”
Under the Biden administration, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission have cracked down on some of the biggest crypto firms including Binance while proposing rules that could bring crypto under its authority. SEC Chair Gary Gensler has said many cryptocurrencies are securities and has said regulation is already clear.
Trump has dabbled in NFTs after he released a collection of 45,000 of them in December 2022. Earlier in December 2023, Trump unveiled another set of digital trading cards that give fans the chance at scoring perks like dinner with the former president, or nabbing a piece of the suit he wore when taken in by Georgia police after being indicted in August.
