Why did some voters support both President-elect Donald Trump and progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?
It’s possible they backed candidates they thought would shake up the status quo. But these contradictory choices go beyond supporting candidates. The latest Civiqs poll for Daily Kos finds similar contradictions in voters’ policy views.
The survey, which was fielded Dec. 7-10, shows that some registered voters aren’t quite buying all of Trump’s campaign pledges—perhaps because they hope he won’t follow through with them. And this is true even among Republicans.
For example, 94% of Republican voters said they believe Trump will follow through on his promise to deport millions of undocumented immigrants. But a slightly smaller share of Republicans (82%) said he’ll move forward with imposing tariffs on imports from certain foreign countries. And an even smaller share—just 50% of Republicans—said they believe Trump will follow through on killing the Affordable Care Act, something he tried and failed to do during his first administration.
These results could reflect voters’ vote preferences. After all, most policies that are viewed as being associated with one of the two major political parties (e.g., mass deportations as a Republican plan and expanding health care coverage as a Democratic one) have a decent amount of bipartisan support.
A Gallup poll released on Monday, for instance, showed that a majority of Americans believe it’s the federal government’s responsibility to ensure all Americans have health care coverage. Meanwhile, the Civiqs/Daily Kos survey and a separate Gallup survey also found majority support for right-wing immigration policies.
In other words, many Americans have messy policy views that don’t neatly align with either major political party.
The results of the 2024 election in Missouri were a great example of how this plays out. Voters there backed constitutional amendments to protect abortion rights, raise the minimum wage, and require employers to provide paid sick leave, all while supporting Republicans—the party generally opposed to these policies—in its statewide races.
Perhaps this is because both parties have fairly broad voter coalitions. Take Trump, who won just under 50% of the popular vote in November. According to exit polls (which are not perfect), Trump expanded his appeal among Latino and Black working-class voters as well as with young women. He also did well with non-college-educated voters. These blocs might not share many of the same political ideologies, but winning over large swaths of voters indicates that the two tents are large enough to encompass voters with somewhat incohesive views.
It’s also possible that in an era of perpetual dissatisfaction with both political parties, some Democratic policies remained popular this year, though some of their candidates did not.
What’s more, no one is making decisions in isolation. Lots of things impact vote choice, and this isn’t true of just undecided voters or voters at the margins—it’s true of everyone.
According to the Civiqs/Daily Kos survey, only 10% of voters said abortion was their “most important” issue when casting a ballot this year, compared with 39% who put it as a top issue (but not No. 1). Another 15% said it was an issue they “considered” when casting a ballot.
Surprisingly, even issues largely associated with the grievance politics of today’s GOP found broad support among Democrats. The survey found that 37% of Democrats believe some sort of election fraud impacted the results of the 2024 election. That includes 24% of Democrats who said a “large amount” of fraud took place. (There is no evidence of election fraud.) Compare that with the 52% of Republicans who think there was at least a small amount of fraud, despite their party securing control of the U.S. House and Senate last month.
What these details reveal is that in a two-party system, voters often have somewhat incoherent views that they have to compress into a binary choice when casting a ballot. Perhaps there’s an argument there for having more than two parties, but until that happens, both the Democratic and Republican parties will have to put up with all sorts of policy compromise and coalition-building—while also tolerating a lot of contradictions.
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