OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
A new survey contains a lot of bad news for the Democratic Party and its president, Joe Biden, as the 2024 campaign cycle begins in earnest.
According to a new Newsweek tracker poll the outlet launched this week, Democrats’ pet issues like abortion and the environment are far down the list of what is most important to a majority of Americans.
According to the survey, which was conducted on July 15 and 16 among 1,500 eligible voters, the economy remains, by far, the most important issue, with 60 percent indicating as much — and at a time when gas prices are rising again, food prices remain high, interest rates have skyrocketed leading to far higher mortgage and auto loan costs, and a growing percentage of Americans have seen their buying power decrease under President Biden.
“Most voters—48 percent—said they were worse off now than they were three years ago. A further 29 percent said they were better off and 22 percent said they were about the same,” Newsweek reported, citing its survey results. “Forty-four percent said their financial situation has worsened in the last year, compared to 28 percent who said it had improved and another 28 percent who said it had stayed the same.”
The next three top issues are also not necessarily strong ones for Democrats. According to the survey’s findings, 33 percent said healthcare was the most important, followed by 28 percent who named immigration as their top concern and 24 percent who said it is policing and crime.
Meanwhile, two top issues for Democrats ranked further down on the list.
“Abortion and the environment were tied at 21 percent,” Newsweek noted, citing its survey.
Philip van Scheltinga, director of research at Redfield & Wilton Strategies, which conducted the survey as part of a new partnership with Newsweek, noted that “the nuances of public opinion that we can already see in this first poll” also do not necessarily align with Democratic cultural and social priorities.
“For instance, 62 percent of Americans say they are proud, rather than ashamed, of their country’s history, and 70 percent believe children in schools should be taught to feel proud of their country,” he said.
“At the same time, 57 percent think institutional racism still exists in the United States. These figures indicate a far more complex public opinion landscape than the bipolar one we may be led to believe otherwise exists,” he went on.
“Likewise, we see pluralities saying children should be taught about same-sex couples, but a majority saying children should not be taught that it is possible to change one’s gender, again indicating the public’s tendency not to perceive issues (in this instance, LGBT issues) in the unified, box-like fashion that political activists would perhaps like them to,” he noted further.
On the issue of immigration, Biden’s extremely lax policies — illegal crossings and drug smuggling have both skyrocketed under his watch after he reversed nearly all of former President Donald Trump’s tough enforcement directives — are also losers for him and for his party, according to the poll.
The survey “found dissatisfaction with the U.S. government’s approach to illegal immigration as 28 percent of respondents said they were very dissatisfied and 22 percent said they were dissatisfied,” Newsweek said.
Meanwhile: “Just 8 percent said they were very satisfied with the U.S. government’s approach, while 11 percent said they were satisfied and 24 percent were neither satisfied nor dissatisfied.”
In response to the question about whether they believed the U.S. had control over its borders, 62 percent of the respondents stated that the country did not, while just 25 percent believed that the U.S. did control its borders, and 13 percent were unsure or did not know.
The Democratic left’s ‘soft-on-crime’ approach is a political loser as well, the survey indicates.
“A majority of voters surveyed said that they believed ‘downtown America’ was less safe than it was five years ago,” said Newsweek. “Thirty-eight percent of respondents said downtown America was less safe and 21 percent said it was much less safe—a total of 59 percent—while 10 percent said it was much more safe and 12 percent said it was safe.”
The poll found strong support for the Second Amendment as well, though 58 percent “said that the Second Amendment should not include ‘the right to own an assault weapon such as a semiautomatic rifle.'”
