A majority of people polled disagree with two key promises President-elect Trump has made over the course of his campaign: appointing Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade, and building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Sixty-seven percent of voters in a Quinnipiac University survey released Wednesday said the landmark Supreme Court decision that affirmed abortion rights should remain the law of the land, suggesting Trump’s vow to nominate conservative justices who would reverse it is largely unpopular among the general public. Only 30 percent of respondents agreed that the 1973 ruling should be overturned.
In the same survey, 55 percent of voters said the incoming administration should forego building a wall along the southern border, a hallmark of Trump’s presidential campaign. Another 60 percent of voters said immigrants currently residing the U.S. illegally should be permitted to stay and pursue a path to citizenship, while a quarter of voters support deporting them.
Trump waffled on what to do with the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. earlier this summer, ultimately deciding that his administration would not propose a path to legal status or citizenship unless an immigrant leaves the country first and subsequently follows the legal process to return.
“And though it drew cheers on the campaign trail, the fiery rhetoric about redirecting the path to citizenship in the U.S. back to the Mexican border is actually losing support,” said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll.
Still, other policy proposals and legislative priorities put forward by Trump enjoy significant support among American voters: 83 percent support increasing the federal government’s infrastructure spending, 64 percent support renegotiating trade deals, and 50 percent back the suspension of immigration from countries with terrorist ties.
Trump released a video message on Monday, his first since becoming president-elect, in which he restated his intention to immediately “withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership” when he enters the Oval Office and “cancel job-killing restrictions on the production of American energy,” among other executive actions.
The poll of 1,071 U.S. voters was conducted Nov. 17-20. Results contain a margin of error plus or minus 3 percentage points.
