What right-wing populism? Polls reveal that it's liberalism that's surging.
Is this the real “Trump effect”?
Updated by Ruy Teixeira May 22, 2017, 8:40am EDT
For liberals, one of most disturbing things about the 2016 election was that it seemed to indicate a massive lurch to the right in a country they thought was getting more, not less, liberal. Many contemplated with varying degrees of seriousness whether they should simply leave a country which had suddenly become hostile territory.
That was a suspect view even at the time of Trump’s election — Clinton did, after all, get almost 3 million more votes than Donald Trump. But it’s even more suspect now, as public opinion polls have shown over and over since last November.
What these polls have revealed is, despite fears of surging right-wing populism, we are seeing surging liberalism instead. Consider the ultra-hot button issue of immigration. In April, the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll asked the public whether “immigration helps the United States more than it hurts it, or immigration hurts the United States more than it helps it?” The response: 60 percent said it helps more than it hurts, and just 32 percent said hurts more than it helps. That is the strongest positive evaluation this poll has ever gotten on this question.
In fact, as the chart below indicates, positive feelings about immigration have generally been rising since early 2016, including through Trump’s election and beyond. And if you go back to 2005, when the question was first asked by NBC/WSJ, positive feelings today are way higher than they were back then. (In 2005, only 37 percent thought immigration helped more than it hurt.)
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https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/5/22/15672530/opinion-polls-liberal-immigration-trade-role-government-aca
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