Survey Says is a weekly column rounding up three of the most important polling trends or data points you need to know about. You’ll also find data-based updates on past Daily Kos reporting, plus a vibe check on a trend that’s driving politics.
Ticked off about tariffs
President Donald Trump has bet his second presidency on tariffs, calling his implementation of them “Liberation Day” and even praising the word “tariff” as “the most beautiful” in the dictionary. And now that Americans have seen tariffs’ deleterious effects on prices and the economy, they hate them.
Only 1 in 3 Americans approves of how Trump is handling tariffs, according to an Ipsos poll for ABC News and The Washington Post. And 64% disapprove, and that includes virtually all Democrats (96%), a strong majority of independents (70%), and even a fourth of Republicans (25%).
Why such a strong condemnation of Trump’s signature economic policy? Because 71% of Americans tell the same poll that Trump’s tariffs will make inflation worse, and inflation remains their No. 1 concern, according to new data from Gallup.
In another new poll, Gallup finds that 70% of Americans think Trump’s tariffs will cost their country more money in the short run than those tariffs bring in. And 62% think the same thing will happen in the long run. Put simply, Americans are skeptical that all this chaos will ever pay off.
And as far as Republican support goes, it’s not great, Bob. Thirty-six percent of Republicans think tariffs will cost the U.S. more in the short run than the tariffs bring in, and even 22% see the same thing happening in the long run, according to Gallup. And 82% say the tariffs will raise the costs of things they buy.
Worse for Trump, Republicans’ tolerance for the economic chaos is low: 64% tell Gallup that they won’t accept an economic disruption of longer than a year. Bad news here, though: The damage Trump has already caused will be very hard to reverse—if it ever happens.
So far, tariffs are popping partisan bubbles—and it could get worse if Trump increases them and once they lead to noticeable price increases.
Apparently, not even Trump can screw with people’s money and get off scot-free, as is evident from his tanking approval rating:
States of danger
No doubt much to Fox News’ delight, San Francisco popped up as No. 20 on U.S. News & World Report’s new ranking of the “most dangerous” cities in America. However, San Francisco is an outlier for one big reason: It’s in a blue state.
Nineteen of the 25 most dangerous cities are in states that Trump won in last year’s presidential election. And 15 are in states Trump won by more than 10 percentage points—in other words, straight-up red states. Across all 25 cities, Trump won their states by an average of 9.4 percentage points last year.
Of course, the vast majority of these cities are headed up by Democratic or Democratic-aligned mayors and city councils. However, the cities are often a blue spot in a red ocean of a state, and as such, they’re subject to state laws—laws that are frequently invasive in how cities do their business.
Using what is known as preemption, red states are passing wide-ranging laws and forcing localities to adhere to conservative policies. Most notably, when it comes to the issue of public safety, red states regularly block blue cities from tightening gun laws, such as in Cleveland (No. 7), St. Louis (No. 2), and Memphis, Tennessee (No. 1).
Family members of the victims of the Uvalde school shooting carry a Day of the Dead altar honoring the lives of the victims in a procession from the Texas State Capitol in Austin to the mansion of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Nov. 1, 2022.
But red states also stop blue cities from being safer in other ways. For instance, in 2023, Texas fought Houston (No. 19) to comply with a state ban of mandatory water breaks for outdoor workers. In that same year, the state set a record-high for the number of heat-related deaths.
Numerous red states also preempted blue cities from implementing social distancing or other public health measures during the thick of the COVID-19 pandemic. And Missouri, Tennessee, Utah, and many other states that host one of the “most dangerous” cities ban localities from increasing their minimum wage, blocking many workers from making a living wage.
None of these dangers factor into U.S. News & World Report’s ranking, of course. In fact, not much data does in general. The ranking is based on FBI reports of murder and property crime. And it doesn’t appear to incorporate sexual assault reports, drug-related deaths, rates of mass shootings or hate crimes, or other common metrics of public safety, much less something like the availability of medical care.
Many of these dangers are policy issues, and the dominance of conservative politics from the state level to the federal level—to say nothing of the judiciary—is clearly making the U.S. a more dangerous place to live, especially compared with other high-income countries.
The Vietnam War at 50
It’s the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, known in Vietnam as Reunification Day, marking the end of the Vietnam War. New polling shows the war remains controversial, but despite young Americans leading the anti-war movement at the time, young Americans today are more supportive of the war than those who lived through it and its immediate aftermath.
Forty-four percent of Americans think the Vietnam War was unjustified, while 29% say it was justified, according to a poll from Emerson College for Nexstar Media. That’s a higher “not justified” number than for any other major U.S.-involved war since World War II. It’s also only one of two wars—the other being the war in Afghanistan—where fewer people say the war was justified than say it wasn’t.
However, Americans ages 18-29 are close to split on whether the U.S. should have entered the Vietnam War, with 48% saying it was the right thing to do and 52% saying the U.S. should’ve stayed out.
In general, the poll suggests that the older an American is, the more likely they are to say the U.S. should’ve stayed out. Only a third of those ages 50-59 and 60-69 say entering the war was the right move. And the lowest “right thing” number comes from Americans ages 70 and older.
That last data point makes sense after taking one key event into account: the Vietnam War draft. Across seven lottery drawings, the military drafted American men born between 1944 and 1956. That means that a sizable portion of the poll’s 70-plus age group was considered for the draft. Even some of the 60-69 age group would’ve been considered, given that the youngest draft-age Americans at the time of the last lottery would be 68 years old now.
Today’s young Americans being split on the U.S. role in the war may have to do with them not having that much of a stake in what happened or simply not knowing much about it.
Any updates?
Vibe check
Even though voters hate Trump’s tariffs, they still narrowly trust the GOP more than the Democratic Party when it comes to the economy. Forty-three percent of registered voters trust Republicans more, while 41% trust Democrats more, according to Civiqs. Fourteen percent trust neither party.
Republicans are besting Democrats at economic messaging—because the evidence is not on the GOP’s side. The U.S. economy performs much better under Democratic presidents than under Republican ones, according to a 2024 report by the Economics Policy Institute that looked at GDP growth, the unemployment and inflation rates, and myriad other factors.
Correction: A previous version of this story misstated a statistic about the approval for Trump's tariffs.
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