Populism and popularity

Ross Douthat had a column on Sunday in which he asked why Donald Trump is pressing for tariffs, even though they are unpopular with Republicans in Congress and not very popular in the country as a whole.  He says it's because Trump has broken all of his other populist promises (like an infrastructure program or tax cut directed to the middle class), so this is all he has left.  Oddly, he missed another example, the crackdown on illegal immigration.  That was one of Trump's central issues, and he's definitely sticking to it.  As with trade, the public does not rate his performance highly:  in a Washington Post/Schar School poll in late June 41% said they approved of the way he was handling trade, and 39% said that the approved of the way he was handling immigration.

Douthat's explanation for why Trump wants to keep some "populist" elements is that it's a way to hold onto "working class" voters who put him over the top in 2016, even at the cost of driving away middle-class suburbanites.  The idea seems to be that those voters are located in Midwestern swing states, so they are more valuable.  I think this explanation attributes an implausible amount of strategic thinking to Trump.  In my view, there are two reasons that he's sticking to these policies.  The first is simply that Trump has strong beliefs on them:  they were major themes in his tweets from the beginning, while the other "populist" elements didn't show up until he started his campaign.  The second is that the ideas of "getting tough" with foreign countries and illegal immigration had been popular, and are still fairly popular. 

  Between 2005 and 2010, the Washington Post asked the following question nine times:  Do you think the United States is or is not doing enough to keep illegal immigrants from coming into this country? .... Do you feel that way strongly or somewhat?"  The distribution of answers barely changed, so I'll just show the figures from 2010:  10% doing enough (strongly) 13% doing enough (somewhat) 17% not doing enough (somewhat) 58% not doing enough (strongly). 

Of course, the actual policies involved in "doing more" have been less popular, just like actual cuts in government spending are less popular than the general principle of "cutting government spending.   Still, when the question was asked this June,  46% still said "not doing enough," versus 50% who said "doing enough."  (Unfortunately this question didn't have a "too much" or "going too far" option, but I'll discuss one that did in my next post).  The Democrats have traditionally benefited from the image of being more interested in the average person, apart from any specific issue positions. There may be a parallel advantage in having a "get tough" image on immigration and trade. 

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]