Americans show a strong preference for their elected executives — governors as well as the president — to achieve their political goals through conventional, sometimes slow, procedures, according to the McCourtney Institute for Democracy’s latest Mood of the Nation Poll.
Results showed marked partisan differences. For example, 26% of all survey respondents rated a presidential action of firing all recently hired federal employees as “very appropriate,” including only four percent of Democrats and just over half of Republicans.
Still, the poll finds that large numbers of Republican prefer the president use conventional actions to achieve policy goals. Seventy-seven percent of Republicans indicated that it would be “very appropriate” for the president to initiate “a year-long analysis to identify the government positions that waste the most money.
In reaction to the poll’s findings, Michael Berkman, director of Penn State’s McCourtney Institute for Democracy, commented, “It is heartening to see that most Americans support changing policies by going through traditional channels. These may be slow, but this approach is predictable, honors existing agreements with state governments, contractors, and public employees, and provides checks on the executive branch.”
The poll of 3,251 adults took place during the first 100 days of the second Trump administration. A time of rapid change, during which President Donald Trump pushed the boundaries of longstanding norms concerning presidential power.
For example, Trump has pursued a dramatic reduction in the federal workforce, used his emergency powers to impose tariffs on foreign goods without the involvement of Congress, and has used executive orders to halt multiyear contracts and grants deemed inconsistent with the president’s political agenda.
The poll sought to understand how Americans view actions like these, to gain insight into citizens view the limits of appropriate executive power.
Respondents were asked to rate each of nine hypothetical executive actions. Since Trump is a polarizing figure, half the poll’s respondents were asked questions about “the president” rather than specifically about “President Trump.” The other half were asked to rate the same actions, if taken by a hypothetical newly elected governor in their state.