Many Americans who dislike President-elect Donald J. Trump share his bleak assessment of the country's problems and believe he has the best chance of solving them, according to a new New York Times/Ipsos poll. It supports some of the more controversial prescriptions.
Slightly more than half of Americans appear to want Mr. Trump to carry out his toughest threat to combat illegal immigration: deporting all U.S. residents without permission.
The poll, which polled 2,128 adults from January 2nd to 10th, found that 55% of Americans strongly or somewhat support such mass deportations.
Americans are almost evenly divided on whether Trump should impose tariffs on countries like China and Mexico, with Trump vowing to impose tariffs as a way to reduce dependence on foreign goods. I am doing it. Still, 46% say trade with foreign countries should be subject to higher tariffs.
And a majority support efforts to severely limit how doctors treat children struggling with gender identity, an issue that Mr. Trump and other Republicans have made central to their campaigns. 71% said puberty blockers and hormones should not be prescribed to people under the age of 18. The Supreme Court is expected to rule on the issue later this year.
The poll shows the country is turning inward, with people more aligned with Trump's “America First” philosophy than they were during his first term.
For such a polarizing politician – Americans view him more negatively than any other president seeking office in the past 70 years – the level of support for his ideas is surprising. It is something. Polls show that most Americans say the United States has been embroiled in costly conflicts abroad while ignoring serious problems at home. The majority believe that the government is sending significant funds to Ukraine. And many people express less tolerance for immigrants overall.
“Something needs to happen on immigration,” said Jose Hernandez, 48, of Atlanta, who is working with a hotel chain on a new project. “I'm a Mexican immigrant myself, and I've waited 25 years. I came to this country legally,” he said, adding, “You can't control the system.”
Hernandez said he considered himself aligned with Democrats on social justice, voting for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joseph R. Biden in 2020. But in 2024, he explained, he supported Trump more as an “anti-Kamala” vote than anything else.
Hernandez said he did not want mass deportations, but said the current situation at the border was “unsustainable.”
“We set the rules and guidelines, and when you don't follow the rules, that's it,” he said.
Trump has vowed to carry out the largest deportation operation in U.S. history. And to a certain extent, the people agree with him.
A majority of Americans (87%) support deporting undocumented immigrants with criminal records, and Trump said this would be one of his first orders of business.
Nearly two-thirds of all Americans, including 54% of Hispanics and 44% of Democrats, support deporting people who entered the country illegally during the last four years of the Biden administration. It comes after many immigration restrictions from Trump's first administration were lifted. semester. At the time, legal and illegal immigration skyrocketed to the highest levels in U.S. history.
A slim majority, 56%, said they believe immigrants make the country stronger. Approximately 41% agreed with the statement that “today's immigrants are a burden to our country.” That sentiment had subsided over the past decade, but now appears to be on the rise, according to some polls.
According to the latest government estimates, the number of undocumented immigrants will reach 11 million in 2022. Demographers agree that the current number is much higher, between 13 and 14 million.
Americans also want their country to stay out of world affairs. Opinion polls show that when asked whether it would be better for the United States to be more actively involved in world affairs or to focus less on foreign issues and more attention to domestic issues, Americans' 60% want to reduce foreign involvement.
As of 2019, fewer Americans expressed a desire to withdraw from international affairs, with a roughly 50-50 split on the question, according to the Pew Research Center.
The Ipsos poll was conducted for the New York Times and aimed to gauge support for specific policy proposals that Trump has said he would implement if elected. It also surveyed public sentiment on a variety of issues that are the subject of partisan disagreement, from the scope of presidential powers to programs designed to promote diversity.
The poll found that the country remained deeply divided over him, despite his exaggerated claims that he had won a “powerful and unprecedented mandate.” They told the Times that about the same proportion of people were anxious or pessimistic about the next four years as they were excited or optimistic. His favorability rating has recently hovered just below 50%, according to an average poll by the website FiveThirtyEight. This is comparable to his share of the popular vote in 2024.
Americans have no intention of giving Trump a clean slate. For example, most people expect him to use the government to investigate and prosecute his political opponents, but a majority of Americans don't want him to do that. That includes a majority of Republicans.
Overall, 73% of Americans say they oppose the idea of Mr. Trump pursuing legal charges against his opponents, with 49% saying they strongly disapprove.
The poll also found that Mr. Trump would lack majority support for eliminating constitutional citizenship guarantees for people born on U.S. soil.
The poll also found that Americans have very low opinions of their government, far lower than they did during the Watergate era. Majorities across races, genders and party lines say the political system is broken and the economy is working against them, which is consistent with some of Trump's harsher rhetoric. It is pessimism.
The belief that Washington is corrupt is widespread across party lines, with two-thirds of Democrats and 80% of Republicans saying the government serves them and those in power more than ordinary people. are. Two-thirds of Americans say the economic system unfairly favors the wealthy.
In interviews, poll respondents reflected the country's fractious mood.
Tara Williams, 49, a compliance manager from Mooresville, North Carolina, said she voted for Vice President Kamala Harris, saying, “So many elected officials serve lower-level constituencies.'' ” he said.
Williams said she doesn't trust Republicans, Democrats or the federal government. “The entire country is on autopilot of cognitive dissonance,” she said. “We need a reboot of the entire government.”
There was some ambivalence among some Democrats about Trump's second term in office.
Booker Preston, 50, a mechanic from Fort Worth, Texas, who voted for Harris, said, “I don't think it's good or bad for Trump to become president.'' Perhaps the government would spend some of the money sent abroad to address domestic problems, he suggested.
“We are spending a lot of money overseas and we really feel we may not get it back and we don't get enough profit to offset it,” he said. . “We could spend billions of dollars here to really help people here.”
Trump's promises to better manage inflation and the economy persuaded many voters. A growing number of Americans are hopeful that Trump's policies will help the economy, rather than hurt it. Among Democrats, about one-third say he will help the economy or at least not make much of a difference.
Americans were mixed about whether Mr. Trump would be able to fulfill some of these economic promises. Most Republicans expect prices to fall during Trump's term. Most Democrats don't expect that to happen.
But most Americans expect him to do what he promises. Almost unanimously across party lines, the majority said he was likely to carry out mass deportations and raise tariffs on China and Mexico.
A somewhat narrow majority of Americans expect that Trump will involve the country in fewer wars. Republicans are about twice as likely as Democrats to expect this.
Like it or not, Trump didn't start a major war, said Tim Malsbury, 56, a nurse in Cincinnati. He voted for Trump in this election, but said he previously considered himself a Democrat.
“I suffered because of the Democrats,” he added.
Gay and transgender rights issues rank far down on most Americans' list of priorities, even though only 4% cite them as one of the most important issues. Republicans have focused on this issue. And Trump, who ran high-profile ads attacking Harris as a radical on the issue, appeared to be more in tune with national sentiment.
For example, the survey found that only 18% of Americans think transgender female athletes (those born male) should be allowed to participate in women's sports. Nearly 80% answered that it should not be done.
On social issues, Republicans are also pushing ahead with efforts to increase racial diversity. Americans are evenly divided when it comes to these programs in schools and government agencies, with 48% saying they want to end such programs and 47% saying they want to continue them.
About 22 percent of Black Americans and 40 percent of Hispanic Americans support ending these programs.
Still, just as many Americans are polarized about Trump, some are reserving judgment.
Ali Romero, 43, of Moab, Utah, said she found it difficult to support some of Trump's decisions on issues such as reproductive rights and social justice. But although she leans Democratic, she doesn't see Harris as a viable alternative.
“So instead of voting for someone and feeling like it's not very good, I didn't vote for anyone and I feel like it's very good,” she said.
At the very least, she says, Trump's presidency will be different. “We cannot maintain the status quo.”
Christine Cheung Contributed.
How this poll was conducted
Here's what's important to know about this poll published by The New York Times and Ipsos:
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This poll was conducted using KnowledgePanel, a probability-based web panel hosted by Ipsos. Here you can see the exact questions asked and their order.
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The sample was drawn from KnowledgePanel and was recruited using address-based sampling to ensure coverage of the entire United States. Americans from that panel were then selected for this study.
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The margin of sampling error for all Americans is approximately plus or minus 2.6 percentage points. In theory, this means that the results should most often reflect the opinions of the entire population, but many other challenges create additional sources of error.
Complete results and detailed methodology can be found here. You can view the crosstab here.
