New Jersey Residents Overwhelmingly Want Legal Sports Gambling
A new survey of public thinking has found that residents of the state of New Jersey favor legalizing sports gambling by a decisive margin. The poll, conducted by Farleigh Dickinson University, shows that people living in New Jersey support bringing legal sports gambling to Atlantic City casinos by a spread of better than two to one.
Sixty-three percent of residents says sports books should be legal at AC casinos. The same number supported allowing horse tracks to take sports bets, while opposition fell even lower, from thirty-two to thirty percent.
The numbers fell to roughly even as to whether to permit sports betting at off-track betting venues. Forty-eight percent said yes, while forty-three percent said no, just outside the poll's four percent margin of error.
New Jersey state Senator Ray Lesniak and the Interactive Media Entertainment and Gaming Association have filed a lawsuit against the US Department of Justice, alleging that the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act unconstitutionally treats four states differently than the rest in outlawing sports gambling in most of the US.
"Here is an issue in which the voice of the public has clearly spoken. Any politician who votes against his constituents must surely be seen as serving special interests, any claim to the contrary notwithstanding,' says legislative observer Thomas Riordan.
"When moral imperatives coincide with popular demand, as in the case for the freedom and liberty to gamble on sports, the only opponents would be those making money on the status quo," says Sherman Bradley, Online Casino Advisory's gambling analyst.
