Poll finds split priorities, heralding more disharmony
Before a new divided government takes charge in Washington, Americans agree that the nation is more divided – and not on much else.
In a USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll, Republican voters worry that newly empowered congressional Democrats will go too far in investigating Trump and his administration. Democrats worry they won’t go far enough. Republicans want Congress to start the year by reducing illegal immigration and funding Trump’s border wall. Democrats want Congress to begin by addressing health care.
“It’s the framework for gridlock,” says David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, with “passionate partisans disagreeing on virtually every issue.”
Just about everybody does agree on this: By 78 percent-11 percent, those surveyed say the country has become more divided since Trump took office in January 2017, not more united.
“The country is going through some trying times,” says Thomas Maslany, 72, a retired engineer from Perkiomenville, Pennsylvania, who was among those polled. He supported Hillary Clinton in 2016 but doesn’t vote a straight Democratic ticket. When it comes to pursuing the president, “my heart says you can’t go far enough. My brain says no, that wouldn’t be good.”
He says, “Congress needs both an investigative and a policy agenda for next year, not one or the other.”
Maslany feels the same pull between priorities that face many members of the 116th Congress, set to be inaugurated next month with a new Democratic majority in the House, a bolstered Republican margin in the Senate and a class of freshmen who don’t necessarily feel obliged to abide by the traditional ways of doing things.
Voters say they want Washington to focus first on their lives – on fixing health care, securing borders, improving infrastructure – rather than on Trump’s behavior. There is no bipartisan consensus about what policies to pursue, and the legal turmoil roiling the president threatens to disrupt just about everything else.
For starters, will Trump complete the final two years of his first term?
Nearly all Republicans, 93 per
cent-3 percent, say he will. Most Democrats, 52 percent-39 percent, predict he won’t. Overall, Americans by 66 per
cent-27 percent expect he will stay on the job.
On a list of six major issues, Republicans echo Trump. Six in 10 GOP voters identify their top priority as illegal immigration, including fulfilling the president’s campaign promise to build a wall along the Mexican border.
“There are some dangerous people out there,” Linda Overby, 75, a retired secretary from Warrenton, North Carolina, and a Trump supporter, says in a follow-up phone interview. “I am concerned about the safety of the country. People talk about the suffering that these people undergo, but we suffer when they come here and try to kill us.”
Only 5 percent of Democrats agree that immigration should be the first issue for the new Congress.
Among Democrats, the top issue by far is expanding access to health care and reducing health care costs, cited by 37 percent. That’s also the top concern for independents, chosen by 35 percent. Seventeen percent of Republicans rank health care as the first issue Congress should tackle.
Catherine O’Connor, 63, an artist and political independent from Lockport, New York, has watched with alarm as the Affordable Care Act has been “eroded and eroded and eroded,” including the decision by a federal judge in Texas last week, being appealed, that the law was unconstitutional. Congress needs to be “very disciplined” in protecting Obamacare, she says.
For Robert Cody, 29, a musician from Los Angeles, taking steps to counter climate change should be at the top of Congress’ agenda. “My most important concern is that the planet is going to be habitable in 50 years,” he says. Climate change is “pretty irrefutable,” but “it seems like we are living in a vast denial.”
While 18 percent of Democrats cite climate change as the top issue, a scant 1 percent of Republicans agree.
There is no bipartisan accord on the question of investigating Trump and his administration. Unsurprisingly, Democrats are more enthusiastic than Republicans about that prospect. They rank it as second on the agenda; Republicans put it dead last.