As more businesses opt to stay open for Christmas this year -- including a growing number of McDonald's franchises -- a new survey finds what the vast majority of Americans think of the new trend: They don't like it one bit.
By a whopping 70 percent-to-22 percent margin, Americans in a new HuffPost/YouGov poll say businesses, in general, should close on Christmas Day so that workers can have the day off, rather than stay open if there is customer demand for it. And by a 60 percent-to-26 percent margin, respondents said that fast-food restaurants like McDonald's, which issued a memo this year encouraging franchises to stay open on Christmas, should close shop.
Slightly more respondents said that grocery stores should stay open if managers feel there is enough demand, but most are still opposed to those businesses remaining open, by a 55 percent-to-32 percent margin.
This is one issue on which broad majorities of Americans across political party lines, age groups and gender agree, although older Americans were even more likely than younger Americans to say that both businesses in general and either fast-food restaurants or grocery stores in particular should remain closed.
Americans are about evenly divided, though, on whether it's acceptable for businesses to ask for some employees to volunteer to work on Christmas: 43 percent said it was an acceptable request, while 45 percent said that it would pressure employees to agree to work.
The HuffPost/YouGov poll was conducted Dec. 20-21 among 1,000 U.S. adults. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.6 percentage points, though that inherent variation does not take into account other potential sources of error, including statistical bias in the sample. The poll used a sample selected from YouGov's opt-in online panel to match the demographics and other characteristics of the adult U.S. population. Factors considered include age, race, gender, education, employment, income, marital status, number of children, voter registration, time and location of Internet access, interest in politics, religion and church attendance.
The Huffington Post has teamed up with YouGov to conduct daily opinion polls. You can learn more about this project, and take part in YouGov’s nationally representative opinion polling.