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Logan Cyrus

“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want,” <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=EAJbAAAAMAAJ&q=%22good+and+hard%22#v=snippet&q=%22good%20and%20hard%22&f=false" target=_blank>H.L. Mencken wrote a century ago</a>, “and deserve to get it good and hard.”

The American people don’t seem to know what they <i>really </i>want from President-elect Donald Trump’s second term. But they might get it good and hard anyway.

As the picture of Trump’s far-reaching agenda has become less and less hypothetical, an increasing array of polling on how Americans feel about it reveals contradictory emotions and priorities.

A new <a href="https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2024-11/Scripps%20News%20Ipsos%20Poll%20Topline%2011.22.2024.pdf" target=_blank>Scripps News/Ipsos poll</a> is a case in point. It shows, as previous polling has, that Trump’s promise of mass deportations for undocumented immigrants is relatively popular. Americans support that broad concept by nine points, 52 percent to 43 percent.

But then the poll did something interesting. It asked the same question again after floating a number of likely and presumable consequences:

If the operation resulted in fewer people paying into Medicare and Social Security, the margin of support dropped to two points (48-46).

If it had a negative impact on the labor market, people were evenly split (47-47).

If it raised the price of goods, opposition suddenly outpaced support by nine points (43 percent support to 52 percent opposition).

And if it led to families being separated, the program was suddenly 19 points underwater (38-57).

To be clear, these consequences would probably arrive with any true large-scale mass deportation operation.

For example, as many as 4 in 10 farmworkers aren’t authorized to work in this country, according to the <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-labor/" target=_blank>U.S. Department of Agriculture</a>. That means a mass deportation operation could have <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/18/economy/economy-trump-deportation-grocery-inflation/index.html" target=_blank>a huge impact on the supply chain</a>.

And a huge proportion of undocumented people in this country have children who are citizens because those children were born here; as many as 4.4 million Americans under 18 lived<b> </b>with at least one undocumented parent as of 2022, according to <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/22/what-we-know-about-unauthorized-immigrants-living-in-the-us/" target="_blank">a Pew study</a> this year. Pew estimated the total number of undocumented immigrants at 11 million.

(Precisely how those families would be handled <a href="https://www.politifact.com/article/2024/nov/14/in-context-tom-homans-comments-that-fam/" target=_blank>isn’t at all clear</a>. Trump’s incoming “border czar,” Tom Homan, who has strongly defended the first Trump administration’s family separation policy, said last month that family separations could be avoided because “<a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-mass-deportation-plan-cost-consequences-60-minutes-transcript/" target=_blank>families can be deported together</a>.” But he later <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/tom-homan-trump-mass-deportation-migrants-families-separated-1984259" target=_blank>seemed to walk that back</a>. Trump has spoken about how “<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/trump-says-will-make-provisions-mixed-status-families-doesnt-rule-sepa-rcna167852" target=_blank>provisions</a>” will be made for mixed-status families but hasn’t said what kind.)

The Scripps/Ipsos poll results echo a <a href="https://law.marquette.edu/poll/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/MLSPSC21PressRelease_NationalIssues.pdf" target=_blank>Marquette University Law School</a> poll from earlier this year that showed support for deporting undocumented immigrants dropping by 16 points when it mentioned how it could deport people who “have lived here for a number of years, have jobs, and no criminal record” — a description that applies to a large number of would-be deportees.

This kind of contradiction also shows up in new <a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/796265728/cbsnews-20241124-SUN#download&from_embed" target=_blank>polling from CBS News and YouGov</a>.

The poll, released Sunday, showed Americans supported the idea of Trump finding and deporting “all immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally” by a wide margin, 57 percent to 43 percent. But when it asked whether people would support using the military to carry that out, Americans opposed it, 60-40.

Trump confirmed last week that he <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/18/us/politics/trump-military-mass-deportation.html" target=_blank>will indeed use the military</a>. And it’s not even clear how such an operation could be run without it, given the scale of the roundup.

That CBS poll showed Americans also have inconsistent feelings about Trump’s plans for large tariffs on imports.

The poll shows that Americans have no higher priority than lowering the costs of goods and services in the aftermath of the recent high inflation numbers. Fully 79 percent of Americans say this should be a “high priority,” far ahead of any other items including cutting taxes. And Americans think new tariffs — basically a tax on imports under which costs are generally passed on to consumers — would lead to higher prices, 59 percent to 18 percent.

And yet! Americans also say they favor new tariffs, 52-48.

You might look at that and think, okay, well maybe people think tariffs would raise prices and really don’t like that, but they think it would be worth it, because it could revitalize American manufacturing and protect American workers. (This is usually the trade-off with tariffs, even as Trump has <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/08/30/trump-vance-tariffs-tax/" target=_blank>falsely pitched tariffs</a> as being paid by foreign companies.)

Except other polling doesn’t really bear that out. The same Scripps/Ipsos poll mentioned above showed just 14 percent of Americans “strongly” supported new tariffs. Twice as many supported them only “somewhat.”

And that’s telling when it comes to that policy and others. Both tariffs and mass deportation were probably net positives to Trump in the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/election-2024/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">2024 election</a> when voters considered them in the abstract. But support could be shallow. As with so many other large policies — such as <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/03/15/the-gops-obamacare-replacement-is-the-bill-nobody-loves-or-is-begging-for/" target="_blank">revamping Obamacare</a> — the actual implementation will come with consequences that voters don’t necessarily love.

Perhaps voters will ultimately reason that these trade-offs were worth it.

Or perhaps the common people were voting on other things and didn’t do a whole bunch of legwork on these incredibly far-reaching proposals.

University of Minnesota

Aaron Blake is senior political reporter, writing for The Fix. A Minnesota native, he has also written about politics for the Minneapolis Star Tribune and The Hill newspaper.

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