President Donald Trump’s convention pitch to send every American a $5,000 check if Republicans keep Congress has flopped spectacularly with voters, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll.
The four-day survey, conducted after the GOP’s first-ever midterm convention last week, found 63 percent of Americans reject the dividend proposal outright, including nine in ten Democrats and a striking four in ten Republicans.
Experts have criticized this plan as essentially a voter bribe, and estimate it could cost up to $1.3 trillion.
Despite that stumble, Trump’s approval rating ticked up slightly to 35 percent, up from 33 percent in late August, still hovering near the lowest point of his political career.
The bigger warning sign for Republicans came in the poll’s generic congressional ballot, where Democrats led 44 percent to 37 percent, the largest margin recorded since Trump’s second term began. A loss of either chamber this fall would leave the president fighting an uphill battle to advance anything through Congress for his final two years in office.
Trump’s slide appears tied directly to his war with Iran, launched in February, which has disrupted Middle East oil shipments and pushed fuel prices toward record highs. Republicans have also lost their traditional advantage on economic policy, with the poll showing Democrats edging ahead as party voters trust them more on the economy, 38 percent to 37 percent, a reversal that hasn’t occurred in roughly ten years.
Trump’s ongoing Washington construction spree, including his controversial White House ballroom project, fared no better with the public. Two-thirds of Americans, including half of Republicans, called the projects a low priority, while 91 percent of Democrats and a quarter of Republicans said they actively opposed them.
The poll surveyed 1,143 Americans with a margin of error of 3 percentage points, suggesting Trump’s headline midterm pitch may be doing more to energize skepticism than support just weeks before voters head to the polls.
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