Here’s a brand new poll on President Trump‘s travel ban from Reuters/Ipsos, which was somehow taken today and yesterday:
The Jan. 30-31 poll found that 49 percent of American adults said they either “strongly” or “somewhat” agreed with Trump’s order, while 41 percent “strongly” or “somewhat” disagreed and another 10 percent said they don’t know.
So, yeah, most people are fine with a pause on new admissions from the seven countries in the executive order. Perhaps that makes sense — most of the stated opposition to it has to do with a perception that it’s actually much more than what it purports to be, a back-door method of implementing the “Muslim ban” Trump had talked about early in the presidential primaries.
Perhaps a lot of minds would change if the ban was extended in time or expanded to cover more majority-Muslim countries to boster that perception. That said, opposition to the Trump E.O. was probably a lot easier to organize, and broader than it might have been otherwise, because of the sloppy, incompetent way in which it was implemented. This was our biggest objection, that the order seemed to be playing with lives and accomplishing little beyond making a point for a political constituency.
Any policy that ensnares large numbers of green-card holders and blindsides people who already had permission to travel to the U.S. (including people who helped U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan) is going to create practical problems, to say nothing of the political problems.
Still, as with things Trump, the poll suggests that this policy just isn’t the political disaster that most people in the media had assumed. A large number of people in big cities with airports don’t seem to like it, and for now that’s apparently as far as it goes.
Source: Washington Examiner
