COLUMBUS – Just over two months into the presidency of Donald Trump and a new survey reveals a wide political divide in Ohio on many issues.
A research polling project at Baldwin Wallace University found 94 percent of people surveyed wouldn’t change their vote, although only about 45 percent viewed Trump as “favorable” or “mostly favorable,” said Lauren Copeland, assistant professor of political science.
“It seems to be a case where people’s attitudes about the candidates haven’t changed since the election,” she said. “But it reinforces this idea that people were more so voting against the candidate they didn’t like than voting for the candidate that they preferred.”
The survey of more than 1,000 registered Ohio voters found a majority of Republicans approve of the president’s travel ban and his plans to build a wall along the U-S-Mexico border, while less than half of Independents and only 20 percent of Democrats shared those views.
On political correctness, just 29 percent said they favor the need for sensitivity toward people from different backgrounds compared to 69 percent who said people are “a little too easily” or “much too easily” offended.
Amid the controversy over “fake news,” the poll also examined attitudes about truthfulness.
Copeland says 66 percent of Democrats said they trust the news media more than President Trump, while 61 percent of Republicans feel the opposite.
“The Trump administration strategy to de-legitimize the mainstream news media seems to be working, at least among his supporters. They seem to be loving his treatment of the mainstream media as ‘enemy number one’,” she said.
There is one subject where Ohioans are in agreement, Copeland said: presidential tweeting.
Sixty-three percent of poll respondents said Trump uses his personal Twitter account too much, and more than half think his use of Twitter is “inappropriate,” given his position.