Voters Don't Like Being Spied On: Will 2016 Candidates Listen?

It can be tough to find common ground between Americans of different political stripes. But when it comes to the National Security Agency spying on us, everybody across the spectrum is equally pissed off, according to a new poll commissioned by the American Civil Liberties Union.

A bipartisan team of pollsters from two different research firms surveyed 1,001 likely voters across the nation. They found that respondents did not want the Patriot Act to be extended unaltered by nearly a 2 to 1 margin: 60 percent of respondents said they'd like to see the act modified "to limit government surveillance," while 34 percent said they'd like to see it stay as is.

"What was interesting to us was that very liberal and very conservative (respondents) were more likely to be in support of modification," Greg Strimple, one of the pollsters, said on a press call about the survey. He noted that respondents who identified as independents were also just as supportive of modifying the act. "This is a true issue that Republicans and Democrats alike can use to reach into the center of the electorate."

When asked whether they were concerned that the US government was "collecting and storing personal information like phone records, emails, bank statements, and other communication," 82 percent were either somewhat, very, or extremely concerned. 31 percent of respondents fell in the latter group.

The poll also found younger respondents were most in favor of modifying the act to reduce the government's mass surveillance, with 65 percent of 18-39 year olds indicating they'd like changes made, compared to 62 percent for respondents age 40-45 and 59 percent for those 45 and older.

But this likely isn't news to politicians. Bipartisan support last week led the House to vote 338-to-88 to approve the USA Freedom Act, a bill that would alter the Patriot Act to end the bulk collection of metadata and force investigators to receive approval before trying to retrieve data stored by communications companies. But the bill needs to pass the Senate, where Republican leaders are pushing to reauthorize the Patriot Act as is, at least temporarily.

Strimple predicted the issue will also provide fine fodder for presidential candidate hopefuls on both sides of the aisle. In fact, Republican candidate Ted Cruz has already criticized fellow candidate Rand Paul for not voting in favor of a bill similar to the Freedom Act last year, while Paul has said he wanted to see legislation that went further to end the NSA's mass surveillance powers.

But even if the Freedom Act passes, ACLU legislative counsel Neema Singh Guliani called the reform "modest" and said the changes fall short of what the public appears to want.

"It shows how disconnected members of Congress are from the feelings of a lot of the public," Guliani said during the teleconference. "And it shows that the current legislative debate and the reforms being considered don't really go far enough to address many of the significant concerns that many individuals have."

And this isn't the first poll to reveal that voters across the spectrum are becoming less and less impressed with the NSA's mass surveillance tactics. Pew Research surveys showed that while in 2013 more people were supportive of the NSA's surveillance, by 2014 the majority had shifted to disapprove of the program. This was consistent across political leanings, with 56 percent of Republicans, 48 percent of Democrats, and 57 percent of Independent respondents indicating they didn't approve of the NSA's mass metadata collection.

Still, individual polls aren't the be-all and end-all for taking temperature on the wide and ever-fluctuating views of the American public. Mass surveillance will undoubtedly be a key issue as we ease up to next year's election and politicians will need to keep a keen sense of public views if they hope to win over voters.