Ending Saturday mail gets thumbs up

WASHINGTON, Feb. 14 (UPI) -- A strong majority of Americans favor dropping Saturday residential mail delivery, a Gallup poll indicates.

The poll released Wednesday found 63 percent of those surveyed said they favor eliminating residential delivery on Saturdays, a move the money-losing U.S. Postal Service has in the works for August to save $2 billion a year. The poll also found 67 percent are okay with reducing the number of days their local post office is open and 41 percent say stamp prices should go up.

The percentages of those favoring the elimination of Saturday letter delivery go even higher for upper income folks (75 percent), those with college degrees (74 percent) and those 65 and older (70 percent). Support is lowest among those 18-29 (48 percent) and non-whites (47 percent).

The poll of 1,025 adults was conducted by phone Monday and Tuesday. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.