Americans Are With Trump On Trade, But Little Else

Americans support President Donald Trump’s stance on renegotiating major trade deals by an unmistakable margin. But when it comes to other items on Trump’s agenda, such as building a border wall and repealing the Affordable Care Act, voters are considerably more skeptical, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday.

Sixty percent of voters said they were in favor of Trump “renegotiating major trade deals with other countries, even if it means paying more for the products you buy,” according to the poll. Meanwhile, 31 percent said they opposed the idea.

Elsewhere, though, support for the president’s proposals was less robust. Fifty-nine percent of voters said they oppose building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, compared with only 38 percent who said they support it.

Voters’ trepidation about the wall only grew when Quinnipiac asked about a scenario where its construction was “entirely funded by the U.S. government and citizens.” When that was the case, as Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto has stated it will be , opposition grew by 4 points, to 63 percent.

When asked if Trump should support efforts to repeal the ACA, voters were split, with exactly half saying he shouldn’t support repeal and 46 percent saying he should. This stands in mild contrast to a recent Morning Consult/Politico poll  that asked whether government agencies should delay or ignore elements of the ACA. When asked about the executive order Trump signed on the issue, 49 percent of the people in that poll said agencies should go along with Trump’s order, while 41 percent disapproved of this idea.

The Quinnipiac and Morning Consult polls differ on support for a few other issues.

Morning Consult asked about the Keystone XL pipeline and the Dakota Access Pipeline, reporting that between 46 and 48 percent of people approved of fast-tracking them, while 39 to 41 percent disapproved.

Quinnipiac’s numbers are more anti-pipeline. Only 40 percent of voters in that poll support restarting the construction of both pipelines, while 50 percent are opposed.

There’s a small disparity between Morning Consult’s numbers and Quinnipiac’s. Quinnipiac’s results are more negative toward executive orders Trump has filed in the first few weeks of his presidency, while in the Morning Consult poll, more people tended to pick the “don’t know/no opinion” option.

This difference is likely a result of how the questions are presented. Quinnipiac, which uses live phone interviewers to conduct its polls, doesn’t explicitly give respondents the option of saying they’re unsure, although some people might volunteer that response anyway. Morning Consult, on the other hand, conducts its polls online and offers a “don’t know/no opinion” option upfront, meaning people are more likely to say they’re undecided. This also suggests that, when indecisive, Americans lean toward disagreeing with Trump.

Morning Consult’s poll was conducted Feb. 2 through Feb. 4 among a national sample of 2,070 registered voters. The interviews were conducted online and the data were weighted to approximate a target sample of registered voters based on age, race/ethnicity, gender, education level and region. Results from the full survey have a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.

From Feb. 2 to Feb. 6, Quinnipiac University surveyed 1,155 voters nationwide with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points. Live interviewers call landlines and cellphones.