Trump’s Least Popular Issue? Most of Them

It’s almost like a bizarre political science experiment: Just how many unpopular policies can one president pursue? From starting a war with Iran to threatening Greenland to building a new White House ballroom, President Donald Trump’s unshackled second-term priorities are compounding the mounting electoral risk for his party in November’s midterm elections.

Trump has always inspired strong emotions, pro and con. But in his first term, Trump pursued relatively few specific policies that big majorities of Americans opposed. He probably generated the biggest backlash with his moves to separate immigrant children from their parents at the border (two-thirds opposition) and limit travel from several Muslim-majority nations (about three-fifths opposition). His other signature policies (the border wall and 2017 tax cut) split the country much more closely between opposition and support. “The things that affected people personally, he had majority support for in the first term, primarily on the economy,” says GOP pollster Whit Ayres.