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VIEW from behind the plow

Katrina “Kate” Trinko, editor-in-chief of The Daily Signal and co-host of the Daily Signal podcast, recently held an interview with Nate Rogers, of Heritage Action for America, sister organization of the Heritage Foundation, discussing surveys on issues dominating politics today. Heritage Action recently took surveys of Americans, asking them about immigration, health care, political correctness and other issues.

The interview was lengthy but interesting.

As an overview of the polls, Rogers laid it out this way: “We entered it not looking to reach any conclusions that we had going in, we wanted to be very open in the polling process.

“The purple state poll is actually the fourth poll of a series of four, so it was actually the last poll that we conducted.

The first poll we conducted was a Republican-only poll so we wanted to see where conservatives and people who identify as Republican agree.

“We know in the past there’s been a lot of divergence of opinions so we wanted to see exactly where opinion kind of combines from a policy perspective. So that was the first poll.

“Then we did kind of a purple congressional district poll where we looked at the kind of places that could go either way and have a lot of diverse folks in those districts, [and we asked] them a similar set of questions.

“Then we did a national survey, and then the swing state, and then the purple state survey.

“We wanted to get into a place where we could see what policies in the year 2020 really cut through the noise and cut through the personalities of politics.

“A lot of the personalities and sort of tact of different characters in politics really kind of take over the agenda. We wanted to see what policies really bring Americans together and different groups of Americans. That was the endeavor and we have some interesting insights.”

We have attempted to boil the interview down to “bite size” as follow:

Immigration

Trinko asked if any of the results of the polling surprised Rogers.

He replied: “Yeah, we had some huge surprises. One in particular, sticking with the subject of immigration, we asked, “When it comes to illegal immigration, which do you think is the biggest challenge illegal immigrants posed to America? (1) They take jobs from Americans. (2) They commit violent crimes. (3) They overuse social services. Or (4) they undermine American culture?”

Huge surprise here, 37% of the electorates said social services – and the social services we listed in the question were schools, hospitals, and welfare.

Political correctness

On this subject Rogers reported:

“This was a question that we first asked in our first survey surveying people who only identify as Republicans and we found that even among very conservative folks and folks who identify as more moderate, political correctness is a huge issue.

“It’s something that a little over 70% of people who identify as Republicans said was a major problem and that was pretty striking to us.

“We asked it in a national survey also. We asked, ‘Do you think that political correctness is a major problem, minor problem, or no problem at all?” And people saying major or minor problem, 79% of the electorate feels that political correctness is a problem.

As I mentioned earlier, we’re looking ... for policies that will bring Americans together and it was very interesting that political correctness, which isn’t really a policy issue, really paints everything going on.”.

Socialism vs. capitalism

“The first statement we put out was, ‘Some people say that free-market capitalism is the best form of government because it gives people the freedom to work and achieve their potential. They say it’s not the government’s job to pick winners and losers and that government intervention only leads to inefficiency and abusive power.’ That was one statement we put forward.

“Then the other statement to choose from was, ‘Other people say that socialism is a more free and compassionate form of government. They say that corporations have too much control and that the capitalist system is set up to favor the rich and powerful. They say that the only way to police corporations and protect the citizens is for the government to take a larger role in managing the economy.’ “We wanted to be as fair as possible in those two statements and really when describing socialism, we wanted to describe it in the glowing terms that the extreme left uses all the time.

“Asking that, 60% of our respondents agreed with the capitalism statement, 60% agreed with the statement describing capitalism being a better form of government. Only 23% opted for the socialist statement. …

“The majority of Americans are still capitalists.

Direction the left is going

Trinko said the left seems to have become much more aggressive in recent years, mentioning the Green New Deal and the $15 per hour minimum wage bill passed by the House.

Rogers replied:

“We asked, basically, ‘Do you think that the left is pushing to a Democratic Party a bit too extreme?’ And 50% responded in the affirmative compared to 45% that disagreed with that statement, and 43% strongly agreed. This was reflected across all the states we surveyed.”

Education

“Starting this out, we asked folks about whether or not they believe that there are skilled labor jobs out there that don’t require you to go to college, don’t require you to take on student debt, and actually can end up paying you more than a job that you would have to go to college for would pay, and 72% of the people we surveyed agree with that, which is pretty impressive compared to only 21% that disagreed.

“The country at large, and this was in our purple state survey, the country at large agrees that there are great jobs out there that don’t require you to go to college.

“On tying with that in our national survey, for instance, we asked, ‘Do you think the cost of a college education is worth it?’ Basically, “Do you think the price of a four-year college degree is worth the price of tuition today?’ And 72% disagreed with that statement.

Taking two different questions from two different surveys, they really do tie into the same sentiment that there’s a lot of issues with the cost of college.

“What are some solutions? That’s a common problem, is there is a common solution that people feel? Well, yeah, 87% of the people we surveyed nationally believe that they would support more efforts for job training.”

Health Care

“We asked Americans, ‘Do you favor or oppose doing away with all private health insurance companies and creating a government-run health care system?” We wanted to keep the language of single-payer or “Medicare for All” out of it, we just wanted to see what the sentiments were exactly.

“And 65% of voters opposed doing away with all private health care, all private health insurance, 65% opposed that, 52% strongly opposed that, so there’s a huge amount of opposition. And only 27% favored it.

“When it comes to if there is a problem with health care, what are your problems with health care? Fifty-five percent, a majority, said that health care costs them too much, it costs the consumer too much as opposed to only 15% that said there wasn’t enough coverage or 9% that said there’s not enough quality in the health care.

Taxes

“This was one of the more unfortunate findings. This is what I point to when people ask, ‘Well, did you cook the books? Did you skew the numbers?’

“This is certainly not a result that is ideal for myself or Heritage Action to find, but yeah, 47% of Americans feel that the richest 10% of Americans are taxed much too low, which is a striking number. And then on top of that, another 16% feel they’re taxed somewhat too low.

“The leftist ideology of Occupy Wall Street and Antifa and these things of free distribution and taxing the rich, that is something that has been effective in terms of convincing Americans, which is sad to see.”

Asked about poll results for Middle income earners, Rogers replied:

“Thirty-three percent said much too high. … While over 60% feel that the richest 10% are taxed too little, a solid 59% feel the middle class is taxed too high, and also 57% say that small businesses are taxed too high.

“There is an appetite for potentially even more tax cuts for middle-class Americans and small businesses, which is great to see.”

The Wall

“We asked, ‘Do you support building a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico?’ And it was very split. It was a statistical tie in our national survey, which is a bit surprising based on what we see the media reporting at large is that maybe it’s just a small minority of Republicans or maybe conservatives, outspoken conservatives, are the only ones who support border security, but that’s just not the case.

“Forty-eight percent support building a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico and 49% opposed, and that’s a statistical tie within our margin of error. But we see immediately where the polarization happens and it does happen between people who live in rural areas and people who live in suburban areas.

“There’s a split between men and women on this issue, so it is polarizing, we pick up the polarization but when we expand beyond the wall and we look at other different solutions to immigration, not solutions to border security, but just other issues within the umbrella of immigration, we see a lot of different things, like skills-based immigration, for instance.

“We asked, ‘If more legal’–that’s important to say–‘legal immigrants are admitted to the United States, should priority be given to immigrants based on their skills or should priority be given to immigrants based on whether they already have family members in the country?’

“Fifty-one percent of our national likely voters that we surveyed said skills, which is a huge number, especially compared to only the 29% that said family.”

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