The Senate Wednesday voted to preserve net neutrality, with three Republicans joining all of the chamber’s Democrats and independents to block a Federal Communications Commission plan to undo Obama-era rules governing the internet. The vote is a major victory for net neutrality activists, but the plan still has a long way to go before it could take effect.

Senators Susan Collins (R-Maine), John Kennedy (R-Louisiana), and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) crossed the aisle to defend net neutrality in what was otherwise a party-line vote. The final tally was 52–47. Collins had announced her support for the proposal in January, but Murkowski and Kennedy didn’t announce their positions in advance of the vote.

Kennedy told the Washington Post that his decision was difficult. But it ultimately came down to a question of who to trust. “If you trust your cable company, you’re not going to like my vote today,” he told the paper “If you don’t trust your cable company, you will.”

In a statement, Murkowski emphasized that she still disagreed with some aspects of the Obama FCC's rules. But she emphasized the need to protect internet users and end the battle over how best to do that. “I have voted to pass this resolution today so that we can reset the discussion and move beyond the politics at play here to what is really needed—lasting legislation that will provide certainty and move us beyond shifting regulatory standards that depend on who is running the FCC,” she said.

In 2015, the Obama-era FCC passed sweeping regulations that banned broadband providers such as Comcast and Verizon from blocking, throttling, or otherwise discriminating against lawful internet content. Last December, the now Republican dominated FCC voted to toss out those rules. The measure approved Wednesday, sponsored by senator Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts), would block the FCC's December order, which is scheduled to take effect June 11, and leave the Obama-era rules on the books. But it also requires approval by the House and the signature of President Trump.

The proposal passed narrowly in the Senate, where activists only needed to win over two Republicans. In the House, they'll have to woo more than 20 Republicans, even with unanimous Democratic support. Meanwhile, the White House has expressed support for FCC chair Ajit Pai's decision to reverse the Obama-era rules, and Trump denounced net neutrality in a 2014 tweet. It's a longshot, but it's not quite impossible. Trump is known to change his mind from time to time, and House Republicans could decide that voting against net neutrality would be politically problematic.

“Don’t listen to the naysayers - momentum is on the side of those who favor restoring net neutrality now,” said former FCC lawyer Gigi Sohn, who points to other longshot victories like the battle to stop two intellectual-property related bills, and the passage of the 2015 FCC net neutrality rules.

Net neutrality enjoys bipartisan support among voters according to a survey conducted by Program for Public Consultation at the University of Maryland last December. That survey found that after the issue was explained to them, 83 percent of respondents, including 89 percent of Democrats and 75 percent of Republicans, favored keeping the Obama-era rules.

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It echoes other polls, such as one published by Freedman Consulting last year finding that more than 80 percent of respondents, including 73 percent of Republicans, favor some sort rules banning broadband providers from blocking or discriminating against content.

The issue has also received an enormous amount of attention, from segments on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver to tweets from Star Wars star Mark Hamill. Opposing net neutrality could be a liability in November's mid-term elections. That's left some Republicans trying to position themselves as pro-net neutrality.