LA Times: On U.S. direction under Trump, Californians split sharply along partisan lines, poll finds
By Kevin Rector
California voters are heavily divided along partisan lines when it comes to President Trump, with large majorities of Democrats and unaffiliated voters disapproving of him and believing the country is headed in the wrong direction under his leadership, and many Republicans feeling the opposite, according to a new poll conducted for The Times.
The findings are remarkably consistent with past polling on the Republican president in the nation’s most populous blue state, said Mark DiCamillo, director of the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies Poll.
“If you look at all the job ratings we’ve done about President Trump — and this carries back all the way through his first term — voters have pretty much maintained the same posture,” DiCamillo said. “Voters know who he is.”
The same partisan divide also showed up in the poll on a number of hot-button issues, such as Medicaid cuts and tariffs, DiCamillo said — with Democrats “almost uniformly” opposed to Trump’s agenda and Republicans “pretty much on board with what Trump is doing.”
Asked whether the sweeping tariffs that Trump has imposed on international trading partners have had a “noticeable negative impact” on their family spending, 71% of Democrats said yes, while 76% of Republicans said no.
“If you’re a Republican, you tend to discount the impacts — you downplay them or you just ignore them,” while Democrats “tend to blame everything on Trump,” DiCamillo said.
Asked whether they were confident that the Trump administration would provide California with the nearly $40 billion in wildfire relief aid it has requested in response to the devastating L.A.-area fires in January, 93% of Democrats said they were not confident — compared with the 43% of Republicans who said they were confident.
In a state where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly 2 to 1, the effect is that Trump fared terribly in the poll overall, just as he has in recent presidential votes in the state.
The poll — conducted Aug. 11-17 with 4,950 registered voters interviewed — found 69% of likely California voters disapproved of Trump, with 62% strongly disapproving, while 29% approved of him. A similar majority, 68%, said they believed the country is headed in the wrong direction, while 26% said it’s headed in the right direction.
Whereas 90% of Democrats and 75% of unaffiliated voters said the country is on the wrong track, just 20% of Republicans felt that way, the poll found.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the poll.
Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) said the findings prove Trump’s agenda “is devastating communities across California who are dealing with the harmful, real life consequences” of the president’s policies.
“The Trump Administration does not represent the views of the vast majority of Californians and it’s why Trump has chosen California to push the limits of his constitutional power,” Padilla said. “As more Americans across the nation continue to feel the impacts of his destructive policies, public support will continue to erode.”
G. Cristina Mora, co-director of the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, or IGS, said the findings were interesting, especially in light of other recent polling for The Times that found slightly more nuanced Republican impressions — and more wariness — when it comes to Trump’s immigration agenda and tactics.
On his overall approval and on other parts of his agenda, including the tariffs and Medicaid cuts, “the strength of the partisanship is very clear,” Mora said.
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