A recent poll of 1,011 Americans found that 2 out of 3 support the legalization of online poker.
Those numbers clearly contradict what anti-online gambling casino mogul Sheldon Adelson came up with in a survey of his own in which the Las Vegas Sands CEO claimed that over 70% of Americans were against online poker regulation. One may wonder how such a discrepancy exists from two seemingly similar surveys.
The answer lies in who was surveyed and the manner in which the questions are phrased. Surveys can often obtain the results that the questioners hope to elicit merely by asking questions in a biased fashion.
The Reason-Rupe poll was conducted via telephone in early December and found 65% in favor of online poker, 32% opposed, and 3% undecided. The results also showed that college-educated respondents who earn between $60,000-$110,000 annually are more supportive of Internet poker, while those on the lower end of the income scale were less inclined to vote positively.
Adelson wrote an op-ed piece in November that was published in the Las Vegas Review-Journal voicing his anti-Internet gambling stance that relied heavily on his poll results. The casino magnate has launched a campaign against online gambling and will undoubtedly use his enormous wealth estimated by Forbes to be around $28 billion to fund his recently-formed coalition to prevent online gambling legislation.
The Reason-Rupe survey found that Americans of an advanced age are less likely to favor online poker. The approval rate dipped to 55% of those surveyed who were above the age of 55.
Those findings indicate what anyone with a bit of common sense could reveal. That Americans who spent the majority of their lives without Internet access have yet to fully embrace the computer age. Adelson is 79 years old and can likely be counted as being among the elder segment of the population who are not computer-savvy and continue to distrust the latest technological advancements.
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