One Big Unpopular Bill

Summary

GD Politics Podcast Summary: "One Big Unpopular Bill"

Host: Galen Druke
Guests: Carl Bialik (US Politics Editor and VP of Data Science at YouGov), Taylor Orth (Director of Survey Data Journalism at YouGov)
Release Date: June 2, 2025

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1. Introduction

In the episode titled "One Big Unpopular Bill," host Galen Druke delves into the recent passage of significant legislation and its reception among Americans. Joining him are Carl Bialik and Taylor Orth from YouGov, who provide data-driven insights into public opinion on the bill, broader political agendas, and various societal perceptions.

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2. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act

a. Overview

The House narrowly passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act shortly before Memorial Day. This comprehensive legislation extends the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, introduces additional tax cuts, eliminates several green energy tax initiatives, implements work requirements for Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programs (SNAP), and increases spending on border security and defense.

b. Public Awareness and Perceptions

Galen questions the level of public awareness regarding the bill's multifaceted components. Taylor Orth acknowledges the complexity: "There's a lot in the bill, so it is difficult to measure overall how much people know about the bill" (04:53). The bill's expansive nature makes it challenging for the public to grasp its entirety, leading to mixed perceptions.

c. Tax Burden Perceptions

A significant finding is the public's expectation of their tax burden:

• Carl Bialik: "Two to one Americans believe that this will increase their tax burden. So it was like 40% of Americans say it will increase their tax burden, 20% say it will decrease their tax burden. No matter what you think about this bill in totality, like you maybe oppose it because you don't want more, a more business-friendly tax environment or to decrease taxes on the wealthy, nonetheless, this is not going to increase Americans taxes 2 to 1" (16:49).

This disparity highlights a perception gap between public expectation and the bill's actual impact.

d. Policy Preferences and Public Support

While extending the 2017 Tax Cuts enjoys broader support, overall opposition to the budget remains notable:

• Galen Druke: "43% oppose, 36% support overall, and 21% had no opinion" (15:17).

Cuts to essential programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are particularly unpopular. Conversely, policies involving the Department of the Interior (DOGE) saw the highest support for reductions in funding.

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3. Support for Work Requirements for Medicaid

Despite general opposition to cutting Medicaid, work requirements receive considerable support:

• Galen Druke: "An outright majority of Americans who support work requirements for Medicaid, 60%, according to recent New York Times polling" (22:08).

Even among Democrats, nearly half support these requirements, indicating a nuanced stance where Americans favor strengthening eligibility criteria without reducing overall funding.

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4. Polling Methodology and Policy Framing

Galen and his guests discuss the challenges of accurately gauging public opinion on complex policies:

• Taylor Orth: Emphasizes neutrality in polling language to avoid bias, stating, "We phrase the policies as neutrally as possible, as accurately as possible" (27:04).

• Carl Bialik: Highlights the difficulty in separating policy approval from partisan affiliations but notes, "We don't want to tell them what the norm is. We want them to react based on what the actual action is" (28:25).

This approach aims to capture genuine public sentiment without overt influence from political narratives.

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5. Americans’ Self-Perceptions

Beyond policy, the podcast explores how Americans view themselves in various capacities.

a. General Self-Perceptions

YouGov's survey reveals that Americans predominantly perceive themselves as above average in numerous traits:

• Galen Druke: "77% of Americans said they were above average on the trustworthiness scale, which mathematicians in the audience know that that is not possible" (44:32).

b. Gender Differences

Significant disparities emerge between men and women in self-assessments:

• Carl Bialik: "Men were more likely than women by a significant clip to say they were above average on intelligence" (46:14).

Women reported higher self-assessments in areas like nurturing, cooking, and empathy, while men rated themselves higher in domains such as intelligence and driving.

c. Impact of Childhood Praise

Childhood experiences with praise influence adult self-perceptions:

• Carl Bialik: "The more you were praised, the more you find it easy to take a compliment as an adult" (49:27).

This correlation underscores the lasting impact of early affirmations on self-confidence and social interactions.

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6. Trust in Media

The conversation shifts to public trust in various media outlets.

a. Trust Levels of Different Outlets

YouGov's annual survey indicates varying trust levels across media platforms:

• Taylor Orth: "The Weather Channel still tops the list as the by far the most trusted news outlet in our survey" (51:18).

Conversely, outlets like National Enquirer consistently rank low in trustworthiness.

b. Trends Over Time

Comparing year-over-year data shows an overall increase in trust for many outlets, contrary to the declining trust reported in broader institutional metrics:

• Taylor Orth: "Overall, compared to last year, the results have been relatively consistent... some notable exceptions, ABC and also the Washington Post" (51:54).

c. Media Consumption and Trust Correlation

Trust levels are closely tied to personal media consumption habits:

• Taylor Orth: "People have a lot of trust in the news that they consume and a lot of distrust in news outlets that they choose not to consume" (54:07).

This finding suggests that alignment with preferred media sources reinforces trust, while unfamiliar or unconsumed outlets face skepticism.

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7. Conclusion

In "One Big Unpopular Bill," Galen Druke, Carl Bialik, and Taylor Orth provide a comprehensive analysis of recent legislative actions and public sentiment. Through YouGov's polling data, the episode uncovers nuanced views on tax policies, Medicaid reforms, self-perceptions, and media trust. The discussions highlight the complexities of gauging public opinion in a multifaceted political landscape and the importance of unbiased polling methodologies in understanding American voters.

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Notable Quotes:

• Carl Bialik on Tax Burden: "Two to one Americans believe that this will increase their tax burden... this is not going to increase Americans taxes 2 to 1" (16:49).

• Taylor Orth on Media Trust: "People have a lot of trust in the news that they consume and a lot of distrust in news outlets that they choose not to consume" (54:07).

• Carl Bialik on Self-Perception: "Some of the ones where this is most extreme... trustworthiness is really high. And that seems like one where it's easy to overrate your ability relative to other people because you don't really have a sense of how they compare" (44:27).

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This summary encapsulates the core discussions and insights from the podcast episode, providing a detailed overview for those who haven't listened.

Transcript

[Galen Drew]

Hey there, listeners. Galen here. I heard from plenty of you who appreciated last week's episode about class in American politics, and I just wanted to kick this show off by saying that if you got something out of it and want more shows like it, consider becoming a paid [e-mail] as a paid subscriber, you'll have full access to all of our episodes, plus videos and more about last week's episode. Simon said, I loved this episode. Galen, please take every opportunity to interview articulate academics like Joan whenever you can. This justified a year of monthly subscriptions. Riley said, absolutely one of my favorite podcast episodes I've listened to. And Kenny said, I'm sending it to all of my friends. To join the folks who make this podcast possible, head to GDPolitics.com and become a paid subscriber to Today. All right, here's the show. When did we work together? Like, how long ago did you leave FiveThirtyEight?

[Carl Bialik]

January or February 2017 was. Was when I left. So I know we. I mean, I remember we overlapped quite a bit, but, like, particularly I recall the 2016 election.

[Galen Drew]

Wait, what was that?

[Carl Bialik]

I think it was mostly a local.

[Galen Drew]

It was like city council. It was like this municipal election. Like nobody really paid attention. In fact, I don't even think FiveThirtyEight did a forecast of it because it was so, like, no one was paying attention.

[Carl Bialik]

No. Yeah, Nate was really more on the sports beat at that point. Yeah.

[Galen Drew]

Hello and welcome to the GD Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Drew. What do Americans think about the One Big Beautiful Bill Act? And is the acronym pronounced OBA or abba? I think for our purposes, we're going to go with abba. So will this be a case of the winner takes it all, or will this be Republicans Waterloo? I don't know how many of our listeners are ABBA fans, but that one was for you. And hey, at least I didn't make any Dancing Queen jokes. I think I'll probably save those for when Trump pardons George Santos. Anyway, that aside, the House narrowly passed the One Big Beautiful Bill act just before Memorial Day. Senate Republicans now have to figure out what they want to do with it, and while they do that, we're going to figure out how Americans are reacting to it. We'll also look at what Americans think of Trump's broader agenda, so much of which is being enacted through executive actions. We've got a lot of polling from our friends at YouGov to help us do that, and they've also got A new survey out testing Americans self regard. Do Americans think they're trustworthy, smart, good at driving, good at running? And how do the sexes view themselves differently? Here with me to get into it all is Carl Bialik, US politics editor and VP of data science at YouGov. Welcome to the podcast, Carl.

[Carl Bialik]

Thanks, Galen. Glad to be here.

[Galen Drew]

For what it's worth, I should say you are also a former 538 colleague from Way back when. So I, I think this is probably your first time on the podcast since you left FiveThirtyEight so many, many years ago.

[Carl Bialik]

I think that's right. I'm excited for this overdue reunion.

[Galen Drew]

Yeah, I know. Okay. Also here with us is Taylor Orth, Director of Survey data journalism at YouGov. It's great to have you as well.

[Taylor Orth]

Very happy to be here.

[Galen Drew]

Before we get into any of this silly politics stuff, we have some serious business to discuss. YouGov recently had the courage to ask Americans about one of the most pressing issues fac facing the country, and that is banana etiquette. Which is to say, which side of the peel do you open a banana from? And is it okay to pull one banana off from the bunch at a grocery store? And then most importantly, what color should the peel be when you eat a banana? Overall, a majority of Americans responded with dignity. Open it from the stem side when it's yellow. And. And yes, you can break off a single banana from the bunch at the store. This is an area of American life with no discernible partisan differences, no gender differences, but there were some age differences. So 18 to 29 year olds were the only age group that said it is unacceptable to break off a banana from the bunch at the grocery store. They were the most likely to say they open a banana from the opposite side from the stem. And they were the least likely to say they prefer yellow bananas by only a couple points, but just slightly more preferred green bananas or even brown bananas. So here's my question. Maybe we can start with you, Carl. What the.

[Carl Bialik]

Well, this certainly isn't the only thing where we find pretty big age differences. We, you know, I'm sure on this show and in our lives, we're often talking about the party differences, but when we get to something that is, at least at this point, still nonpartisan, like banana.

[Galen Drew]

At least at this point. Yeah, I'm glad. At least at this point. But who knows, after this conversation, things could really go haywire.

[Carl Bialik]

Exactly. As soon as there's a big, beautiful banana act that is supported by one party over the Other it'll change things. But yeah, there are enormous age differences in general in this country. I had very little preconceived notion of what the gap would be. But I'm not surprised that age is sort of the, the axis here on which people are dividing.

[Galen Drew]

Taylor, do you have any key insights into why Americans are divided by age over banana etiquette?

[Taylor Orth]

Yeah, I honestly would have expected the opposite because you might think young people, if they're living alone, that they might be the ones who want to break off one banana, whereas older people, you might expect to have more family around larger households and they might be more likely to want to buy a bunch. So I was a little surprised, I'll be honest, that it was the younger folks who were less accepting of taking the single banana.

[Galen Drew]

That's a pretty rigorous analysis. I do have to ask you, I know that sometimes with these online opt in polls you can get weird things that happen, especially along sometimes age lines or race lines. Like the classic example is, it was something like 25% of Hispanic men said that they were licensed to operate a nuclear submarine in a, an experiment that people Pew Research did using these kinds of panels. Do you worry at all that this is misrepresenting the younger population or do you feel confident that this is an actual age based divide in America?

[Carl Bialik]

We are always thinking about data quality with these polls. We're applying the same rigorous filtering of respondents based on number of signals. So we're as confident in this as we are in any of the results we release, which were quite confident in in this particular case. Like, I think for any poll, if you see that something is a very fringe position, then there's a risk that putting aside this question of like age or, you know, certain groups of respondents, it's possible that the people who have selected this very rare response are not following quite as closely, not, not paying close attention, not taking it quite as seriously. But in this case, even though there was a clear position that was more popular for all these important banana questions, there was on the other side, like enough people even in the older age groups that I just think there actually is a solid group of Americans who, let's say, open bananas on the side that I never would have thought of. And in fact, when we put this out on social, I was expecting a lot of how could anyone think of opening a banana on the side that doesn't have the stem? But it was actually the other group that was very vocal and was saying, can't believe that 72% of Americans are wrong about this, and this morning I was opening a banana for my two year old daughter and tried the other side based on these poll results and the social media reactions and it worked really well and she helped. So anyway, I think in this case I'm quite sure that there are a lot of Americans who open bananas that way and are never going back.

[Galen Drew]

Well put. And to be clear on the numbers here, it was 72% of Americans say they open it from the end with the stem and, and 20% said they open it from the other end. I have a general question here because YouGov oftentimes poses questions like this that don't have anything to do with politics but may get at some funny divide in American life or pithy divide in American life. Have you ever posed one of these questions and been like, oh, this result is actually profound? Like I'm really glad we asked this question because I got, I understood the public better because of it.

[Carl Bialik]

I think it happens often. I mean not, not to be self promotional, not to trick. I think it's more just that I don't, I don't really know what to think people think about things at this point. I had much more confidence when I entered this job that I knew what people would think about things. And now if we're putting out questions, it's because we genuinely don't know. I mean, of course there are the cases where we are trying to validate our own opinions about these hot button debates, but even then we're often surprised. But just to give an example, I was going to the dentist last week and I was brushing my teeth and I was thinking, isn't it kind of strange that I do that because the dentist is going to see what my teeth look like and clean them and that's like why I'm there and that's what they're good at. So we asked, you know, like, how many do you do? Do you typically do that? Would you typically do that before going to the dentist? And I thought it would be, most people do it, but it'd be something like the banana result, maybe 70 to 20. And it was 95% say they do that. And there are very few things that 95% of Americans say they do. So to me that was like a profound united front that Americans are putting on in terms of pre dentist behavior. And it, it shook me. It really did. So anyway, I found that to be profound.

[Galen Drew]

Carl, Shame is universal, right? Everyone will feel shameful of their stinky, stinky breath if they walk it into the dentist's office. And expect them to take care of it. That feels intuitive to me, but I'm glad. I'm glad.

[Carl Bialik]

So you would have, before you run it, if we had said, galen, what's the percent? You would have said around 95%.

[Galen Drew]

And frankly, if you aren't like, get what's wrong with you and don't go to the dentist, like don't put your dentist through that.

[Carl Bialik]

They're wearing masks and getting paid quite a lot for that.

[Taylor Orth]

I was just thinking about relatedly, Carl, we asked a while back about whether or not people lie to their dentist about flossing their teeth. A lot of dentist related etiquette we've done before and found around 40% of people say that they at least sometimes lie to their dentist about how often they floss.

[Galen Drew]

Only 40? Okay, raise your hand for the, for the podcast listeners. They're not going to know the answer to this. This is only for people who are watching the video. Raise your hand if you were on this call and you have lied to the dentist about your flossing routine. All right, there's our result. But if you want to know the result, go check out the video.

[Carl Bialik]

I mean, one of the things about how we present poll results that we try to be careful about Is to say 40% say they lie. So if we're asking about lying behavior, you know, we might be missing some people who both aren't honest with the dentist and aren't going to be honest with pollsters even if we never meet them or, you know, get to shame them. But I also think, I mean, I'm glad that you flagged shame, Galen, because I think there's like a broader polling topic we need to dig into more about like shame as a consideration and motivation when it comes to dentists and doctors. I think some people will avoid visiting doctors at all because they're afraid of shame about their weight or about something else. And we've touched on this in various polls. But I think it is actually a pretty important topic, maybe stemming from a somewhat less weighty prompt that we started with here.

[Galen Drew]

Yeah, well, get back to me when you have, when you have those shame based results. Come back on and we'll talk about them. But for now, let's talk about abba. Do you guys have a favorite song from their discography? No. Have I encountered a non ABBA crew?

[Carl Bialik]

I mean, most of what's in my head is from the two movies. Also my daughter loves the music. But what, like I don't know which would be the one song.

[Galen Drew]

So it's probably Dancing Queen.

[Taylor Orth]

I don't Probably Dancing Queen.

[Galen Drew]

That would be what I would say. Yeah, we're saving that for our friend George. Okay. Anyway, jokes aside, as the name suggests, there is a lot in the one big beautiful bill act. It extends the 2017 tax cuts and Jobs Act. It cuts taxes in some other business friendly ways and on some types of incomes, including lifting taxes on tips up to a point. It eliminates several green energy tax initiatives. It introduces work requirements for Medicaid and Supplemental nutrition programs and boosts spending on border security and defense as well as some other things.

[Taylor Orth]

Things.

[Galen Drew]

How much awareness about this bill is there amongst the public?

[Taylor Orth]

Taylor well, there's a lot in the bill, so it is difficult to measure overall how much people know about the bill. I can point to one question. We ask about whether or not it will increase or decrease the deficit. And current estimates, as far as I'm aware of, do show that the bill is expected to increase the deficit to some extent. And, and we find that 37% of Americans say that the new budget will increase the deficit, whereas around 1 in 5, 20% say it will decrease it and around 16% say that it will stay about the same. And you know, with Democrats, most of them say that the budget will increase the deficit, whereas Republicans are pretty split on this question. 40% say it will decrease the deficit and the rest are split between saying it will increase it or keep it about the same. So, so on the deficit, on that end of their knowledge of what's going to happen with the bill, there's kind of mixed perceptions.

[Carl Bialik]

Yeah, I mean we have asked people if they think it will increase their tax burden and also if they think it will increase tax burdens defined broadly like across poor people, middle class, the wealthy. And there is a lot more expectation of increase of tax burden by the public than there is baked into the bill. I think maybe another way to measure, get at sort of like awareness is that a lot more people support extending the 2017 tax cuts and Jobs act than oppose it. But the budget itself is opposed quite a bit more than it supported. That's not the only aspect of the budget, but I think that also gets at kind of the difficulty in asking about bills where they're given names that sound really good even if you you haven't given them an acronym that's tied to a very popular Swedish band. And to some extent we kind of ha sometimes we have to ask about the bill by name. But the Tax Cuts and Jobs act sounds great. Like you know, people like both those things quite a bit if you pull them separately. But asking about the current budget is less popular because, you know, budget is like a more neutral concept.

[Galen Drew]

Yeah, I mean, there's some different threads here that we can pull out. You asked, overall Americans, do you support or oppose Trump's budget? It was 43% oppose, 36% support overall, and 21% had no opinion. So at the very least, it seems like 20% of Americans are willing to say they don't know enough about it to form an opinion on it. And I have to imagine that a lot of the people who are saying they support or oppose are reacting more to the fact that the question includes President Trump's proposed budget than knowing the details in it. To your point, Carl, one of the most striking details I found was that two to one Americans believe that this will increase their tax burden. So it was like 40% of Americans say it will increase their tax burden, 20% say it will decrease their tax burden. No matter what you think about this bill in totality, like you maybe oppose it because you don't want more, a more business friendly tax environment or to decrease taxes on the wealthy, nonetheless, this is not going to increase Americans taxes 2 to 1. So what is going on there? Like, how do we parse through what Americans actually believe or want when we see either things that are out of step with reality or things that are even contradictory? Like you mentioned, you know, there's a good deal of support for extending the 2017 tax cuts and Jobs act, while quite a bit of, well, not quite a bit of opposition, but at least by seven points. Opposition to this budget.

[Carl Bialik]

Yeah, we did ask it again in the following week's Economist YouGov poll and it had slipped a bit. So is Now, I think 36% support, 47% opposed. There's, there's probably a lot of colliding factors here. Some of it is just general lack of awareness of the bill. Maybe a sort of generic association of the word budget with, with, like, well, that means spending and so that has to be paid for somehow. Maybe an experience with past budgets from past administrations during someone's adult lifetime that have involved tax increases. At times, just about any question where we let people react in some way to something labeled with the Trump administration, people who are staunch opponents of that administration are going to choose. Some of them are going to choose the option that is negative. And in this case that would be a tax increase for a lot of them. And we deliberately, on these questions, give people a range of options. So you can say, I'M strongly opposed, or you can say, I'm somewhat opposed. And if you don't know very much about it, but you do know that it's a Trump proposal and you know that you generally oppose anything that Trump proposes, then you can be somewhat opposed without knowing a whole lot about it. So, you know, I think that's some of what could inform it. But it is surprising. I mean, I think 40% is also, it's a lot more than the people who say we'll decrease it, but it's also a lot less than half. So there are at least a lot of people who aren't saying that they expect that to happen. The only other thing that comes to mind is, you know, the best laid plans. Maybe some people think, well, this proposal says it's not going to increase taxes, but because of, you know, the nature of government spending and that it's expected to increase the deficit and so on down the line, it's going to increase my taxes, even if it doesn't right away. So there may be some sort of like, skepticism or cynicism baked in here as well.

[Taylor Orth]

I'll add that people are most likely to expect for the bill to increase taxes on the middle class, and most Americans identify as middle class. So I think that, you know, if you put those two facts together, it's not as surprising that people expect their, their tax burden will increase.

[Galen Drew]

Yeah. And you sort of broke it down and asked about support for cutting government spending on different social programs or even agencies. Going piece by piece, Taylor, what did you find there overall?

[Taylor Orth]

We found this repeatedly that cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security are, are very unpopular. Americans generally want these programs to be given more funding rather than less funding. So on that front, any sort of attempts to cut those things are going to be unpopular in terms of other government agencies and departments. We generally find that Americans also want more funding for things like the Department of Education, Health and Human Services and generally want decreased funding for the irs. Support for decreasing funding for DOGE is especially popular. We found repeatedly that that is the agency Americans are most likely to want, want cuts to, which you know is not that surprising given that it's, it's new and is itself implementing cuts.

[Galen Drew]

Cut the cuts. You did something interesting, Taylor, where you asked this without giving people information about how much money the government currently spends on these agencies or programs. Then you asked a different group of people. You said, okay, this is how much we're already spending. Now do you think we should increase or decrease funding? And how did that change Americans reactions.

[Taylor Orth]

What we found in this experiment was that when we showed people the current budget, they were less likely to say that they wanted increased funding for defense. And we, I think when you see the bar chart that we showed people, you can see that defense kind of funding is far larger than the other areas. And so I think by being shown that it led people to, I think who may not have known the extent to which those differences existed. That experiment, when they were shown that led them to be less supportive of increasing funding for defense. We didn't see that many differences in for other departments in that experiment. So it was the primary effect was on defense in that instance.

[Galen Drew]

Today's podcast is brought to you by you, dear listener. When you become a paid [e-mail] there's a little message you can fill out explaining why you chose to subscribe and support the podcast. One of the main themes you've mentioned is rigorous. That's important to me and it makes me really happy to hear that it's important to you. Steven says you and the FiveThirtyEight podcast helped me better understand politics and the world. For years I couldn't imagine not having the same rigorous data driven analysis on politics in my life and in my ears. Kayla said, One of the most trusted voices in American politics and public opinion. In a world where accessible is evidence based, media is fleeting. Galen offers digestible, insightful analysis. Wow. Thanks Kayla. Warren says Galen offers calm data presentation and guides us through context, possible causalities and potential implications. This thinking process becomes second nature, making listeners into more critical consumers of media. Wow, Warren. I mean put it on my tombstone. Glenn says the least lean of anyone on TV, you don't take yourself too seriously. I'm over 80 and you don't talk in in speak that I can't understand. Well, I'm not on TV anymore, but I do appreciate it nonetheless. And lastly, Odin Habler, I think that's how you say your name, says I like your data driven approach. I'm not even in the US but I am a political scientist and here in Germany there doesn't even exist an equivalent in podcasts. Join these listeners by becoming a paid subscriber today and at GDPolitics.com in fact do it right now. We will still be here when you get back. That's GDPolitics.com and thank you. You know you mentioned that there is not a lot of support. There's plenty of antipathy towards cutting Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and the like. But the focus of this bill is to implement work requirements on, on Medicaid and snap benefits, as well as some other changes. I think there are federal caps on Medicaid funding. When you look at polls that ask just that, you get an outright majority of Americans who support work requirements for Medicaid, 60%, according to recent New York Times polling. And in fact, it was almost 50% of Democrats. It was like 47% of Democrats supported work requirements for Medicaid, which sounds obviously a lot different than cutting spending, but is ultimately, in some ways at least, looking at how this budget nets out or considers funds saved is the end result. So how should we think about that? Like, Americans don't want to cut Medicaid spending, but they do support work requirements.

[Carl Bialik]

Yeah, I mean, I think that they were asked separately and it would be interesting to find out what happened, what would happen if you'd sort of asked them back to back. But I also think they can be consistent positions that a lot of Americans have in that they could say, you know, for the people who we think generally deserve this, this government support, they should be getting more. And, you know, maybe there are a lot of them who aren't even signed up because it's hard to sign up. Their state isn't implementing it well enough that, you know, there are lots of ways that sort of Medicaid could be expanded to people who do meet new, tougher requirements and maybe overall expanded, while also maybe satisfying some people's preference for having it feel more fair or justified, you know, who's getting this benefit. I also think, like, a lot of people sort of don't think quite as mathematically when they're answering these questions. And it's more to say increased funding is a way to say that you support this program, that you think it's good that people get the benefits, and you're not thinking of it in terms of, you know, overall federal outlay should go up by 10% or something. But, yeah, I mean, I do think that questions like that on work requirements sort of tap into a very common feeling of people need to deserve to get this benefit in order to get it. Whereas a question about funding taps into more of sort of the compassionate side of we should be giving people who do deserve this the support they need.

[Galen Drew]

I think that makes a lot of sense. But I think we are also sort of touching on something that's a little bit tricky here, which is if you want to figure out how Americans feel about policy proposals, a bill, an executive action, you have to figure out how to ask them. And as we've Shown here, the way that you ask will shape what results you get, which is why when we talk about polling policy, things can get messy quickly. Right. If you ask, are you voting for Trump or for Harris, people understand what that means. There's only so many ways that you can ask about support for one or the other. But in a case like this, if, for example, a progressive firm wants to get a result showing that Americans overwhelmingly support increased federal spending for social programs, data for progress can go out in the field and ask sort of all the kinds of ways that will encourage people to respond based on the empathy or what, you know, whatever bias that people may have. Whereas someone else, another organization, say, Americans for Prosperity, can go out and say, okay, we want to ask all about sort of concern for future generations and the tax burden on them, and, you know, what, you know, generational equality arguments and things like that, and you can just get radically different results. So you have done a ton of polling on policy, Trump's policies, both this and what we'll get to next, which is his executive actions. How do you go about deciding what language to use?

[Taylor Orth]

You really have to strike a careful balance. We've been tracking since the start of Trump's second term. Most, I won't say all, because I'm sure we've missed some, but of the policies that he has either proposed, enacted executive orders, he's signed. In doing that, we have faced this dilemma of how can you word these policies in a way that, in our case, I would say that our goals are to phrase the policies as neutrally as possible, as accurately as possible, in terms of getting close to what the policy is both doing and how Trump is conveying it. And also to keep the language concise and clear and understandable so that respondents can understand the language. You know, trying not to use jargon or inflammatory language in. In our phrasing of them.

[Galen Drew]

One thing I also saw is you try to exclude Trump from the questions, which maybe gets at what we were talking about before. The minute people see Trump, they're primed to respond a certain way. So they're not even necessarily told that this is something that Trump is proposing when you ask about these policy questions.

[Taylor Orth]

Right, that's correct. Yeah. We have experimented with that, and we did find that when Trump's name is attached, it decreases Support by around 2 points on average across the policies and.

[Carl Bialik]

Polarizes support a bit, as you would expect. Yeah, I mean, I think experimenting is a good point to bring up because we do try to do all the things Taylor said, but we're never going to get it completely right. It is really hard, like you said. So some of that is we do tests, we, we try out different question formats with the same policy. We try different wording. We can't test every single one because Taylor's run this on 270, 283. 283 policies since the start of the year. But I think our general approach is we don't give context, like this is a Trump proposal. And we also try not to say this is a change from how it has been or to sort of over. We don't want people to be swayed too much by like, well, this is what the norm is. We don't want to tell them what the norm is. We want them to react based on what the actual action is, which is totally debatable. I do think on a lot of things, besides mentioning Trump, on a lot of things that we test, they just don't make that big of a difference. People actually do sort of get what we're saying. So that sort of gives me some assurance. You gave examples of how firms could maybe swing things in a certain direction, and it's definitely possible. But when I've seen that it's often involved a lot of text, a lot of background of what people say about it and so on. And in terms of these more these smaller differences in a sort of 10 word description of a policy, my general impression is that it doesn't swing things that much.

[Galen Drew]

Okay, well, on that topic, you said 283 policy proposals you've asked Americans about since the start of Trump's second term. And so much of this has been through executive action, because as we know, there has been a historical low in terms of legislation making it through Congress this time around. I'm curious, Taylor, what overarching trends you've seen in terms of what Americans think of Trump's proposals.

[Taylor Orth]

Overall net support is more negative than positive, meaning that more Americans on average oppose the policies than support them. The average net support is negative. 17. One thing that we did was to code the policies into different categories since we have such a large number. One benefit to that is even if there are language differences or things, you know, you might be concerned about within individual policies, aggregating them up is one way to kind of see how Trump's doing across these, these different areas. And one thing we did with that was to code these policies. We coded them into individual categories. So, for example, we find that his worst performance is on health care, energy and the environment, executive power and foreign policy, whereas the only area in which he had positive, net positive support was on LGBT issues. Things like banning transgender athletes from women's sports, bathroom laws, things like that. Separately, we also coded the policies into whether or not they involved government cuts. One thing we realized pretty quickly was that a lot of the policies were things being enacted by Doge. Cuts to staff funding at various agencies that involved a lot of the policies. So we also separately looked at that, and what we found was the policies that. Which was about a quarter of the policies that involved these cuts. Those policies were especially unpopular, about twice as unpopular as policies overall. Even among Republicans, support for the different types of cuts was almost breaking even, about plus three, which is relatively low to what one might expect.

[Galen Drew]

And this is not all stuff that's been enacted. A lot of it is proposals as well that have not yet been enacted. And a lot of the stuff that has been enacted will make its way through the courts and may not ever end up enduring. But when you take out those Spednik cuts and just look at sort of other kinds of proposals, are there areas where he is popular beyond LGBTQ issues? Like, it looks like the closest he gets is on immigration and the economy?

[Taylor Orth]

Yeah, there are some things, like, for example, the tax. No. Taxes on tips, eliminating taxes on Social Security benefits. Both of those are popular. There are some policies that are popular other than the LGBT issues, especially on the economy and immigration, as you mentioned.

[Carl Bialik]

Yeah. And I think precisely because these aren't all enacted, many are never going to be enacted. And the sort of awareness that people have of these is going to vary a lot. While we did take these sort of straight averages, and I think they are really informative, it could be that somebody who dislikes most of these policies also doesn't know that most of them are associated with Trump or doesn't actually care about those that much, even though they dislike them and could still overall be supportive of Trump's policy agenda. So it is like a tricky thing to aggregate. The best we can do is the kind of straightforward average. But if you, like, had heard about the eliminating taxes on tips and feel like that's great, or, you know, the elimination of the penny, then maybe you think, wow, like, he's really onto something without having heard much about a lot of the ones you don't like.

[Galen Drew]

Yeah. And underneath this, there's so much variation. So I'm just looking at the wonderful data that you've put together, which folks can check out, for example, checking the electronic devices and social media accounts of people entering the US and using what is Found to disallow entry to those who have been critical of Trump administration policies. Net approval for that net support is negative 44. So very unpopular. Allowing immigration officials to use IRS tax data to identify immigrants suspected of being in the country illegally. Plus 13. So underneath the, I think netted out to be something like net negative 6 on his immigration policies, there's a lot of things where there's plenty of support and there's a lot of things where there's less support. Which gets to a question. You know, some of us suspected that there could be a thermostatic backlash to Trump once he takes office and enacts the things that he's been saying he would enact. Have you seen any slippage, like, do you go back and ask over time on immigration, on the economy, on healthcare, LGBT issues, if Americans are sort of warming to them or cooling to them?

[Carl Bialik]

Yeah, I mean, I think we, we've gone back on a handful of issues that the pace of new policies and new policy proposals is enough for us to keep up with that. We, we haven't gone back that often. I think we should, especially on some of the early ones. Also, some of these are almost exactly or closely tied to things that Trump was saying on the campaign trail. And so we have been able to sort of compare some of those individually and collectively. And his proposals during the campaign were less popular overall than Harris's, but quite a bit more popular, I'd say, than. Than the ones we've been tracking during his second term. Which you could say is kind of normal. Right. Like, you should put forward your most popular stuff during the campaign, and then you try to enact lots of things that maybe you didn't want to talk about. That's not an unusual arc. But we've also tracked what people think of as handling on issues generally and on pretty much everything. They've gone down from the start of the term, although some of them have started to bounce back a bit since kind of the lows around the, the tariff announcements.

[Galen Drew]

And I also found you mentioned comparing Harris's policy agenda to Trump's during the campaign. I thought that was really interesting. So, yes, on net, Harris's proposals were more popular. But when you separated them out according to what Americans cared most about, it was Trump whose policies actually performed better. Right. Like, if you looked at the economy, immigration, things like that, Trump performed better than Harris. Where Harris had a lot of it was, you know, like, what was it Eliminating excess fees on, like, when you purchase tickets was like, one of the most popular. I mean, that was part of the Biden agenda too. But like some of these, maybe less salient things hold incredibly well, but aren't really what motivate partisan conflict in America, if that makes sense.

[Taylor Orth]

I will say something we recently looked at was kind of plotting approval of Trump on various issues by how important Americans think those issues are. And what we saw there was kind of an opposite trend for Democrats and Republicans. So Republicans approve of what Trump is doing most on the issues that they care about most where, whereas for Democrats, it's the opposite. The issues that they care about most are the issues that they're least likely to approve of Trump on. So you kind of see a reversal there, given the two for each party.

[Galen Drew]

Yeah, I guess that also makes sense, which I want to get to some of the more contemporary debates in the past weeks or so about Trump. Have you had the opportunity to pull Americans on Trump's conflict with Harvard or starting to rescind student visas for college students from China, for example? How are Americans reacting to this more recent round of executive actions?

[Taylor Orth]

We'll have results on the specific Harvard policy soon, but we have asked whether or not how Americans feel generally about international students contributing to the country and, and have found that opinion is very positive. So 67% of Americans say that international students generally have a positive contribution to the country. Only about 10% say it's negative. And even among Republicans more perceive a positive impact than a negative one. So at least broadly, there are positive views, I would say, towards that. And we also asked whether or not it's acceptable for the government to block universities ability to enroll international students in order to pressure a university to comply with its demands. That's how we ended up wording it, rather than making it specifically about Harvard. And on that question specifically, Americans are far more likely to more than twice as likely to say that doing so is unacceptable than to say that it is acceptable. And even among Republicans on that as well, there was more who said it was acceptable, but there was a divide, whereas, you know, might see less of a divide on other issues.

[Galen Drew]

We see over time that there's often a trend in Americans will say, you know, they maybe support the Republican Party, but when you ask about individual policies, they maybe support the Democratic Party more. I mean, that has been shaken up a little bit as, as Trump has, you know, moderated on some issues like Social Security and Medicare. And then other things have become more salient, like immigration. But like the, the maxim in American politics is that we are global conservatives and sort of more, when you get into the specifics of it, we're liberals. So when it all comes down to it, how much does this policy specific level polling really matter? Like what are we getting out of all of this to, to ask the, the real question here?

[Carl Bialik]

Well, I think that to some extent people are already wanting to be responsive to voters ahead of midterms. I think that that's an aspect of it. And the, these, the budget, a lot of these policies, if they are enacted one way or another, are going to become issues in these, in these campaigns and you know, which way the members of Congress line up on it are going to matter. So I mean, I think there's like straightforward kind of electoral implications. There is I think sometimes like kind of a, a strange use of polling during a presidential term, especially early where it's like, oh, the president must be in a lot of trouble because their approval ratings are down or their approval ratings on the economy or you know, their policy approval. Like we're polling because there isn't a presidential election for a while and at least for now we have term limits. So you know, to the extent that the president and his administration wants to do things, he doesn't necessarily have to be as responsive to public opinion, except maybe a general desire to keep, you know, those numbers up. But it, but it could certainly affect the party downstream. I do think that like to some extent what people say about what, you know, what they think about certain policies does affect and should affect whether they go forward and in what form. So it's, it's, you know, some of these things may not happen because of reactions to them or they may get changed. And then it's, you know, as pollsters we also like to track over time. So it is a way to sort of measure how people are maybe changing their views. Maybe there are some Trump voters who come around to certain positions they never supported or never even thought about, let's say on Greenland and the Panama Canal because you know, now the person they voted for is, is, is taking those positions. So I don't know if that's particularly satisfying. But those are some of the things that I think about with, with, with these numbers and the effects they could have.

[Galen Drew]

I was just testing you. You know I support polling, poll, everything is, is my opinion. No, let's move on and talk about that polling that I mentioned you did on Americans self perceptions. But first a break. Today's podcast is brought to you by you, the listener. As I mentioned earlier, when you become a paid [e-mail] there's a little message box you can fill out explaining why you chose to subscribe. Now, one of those main themes was rigor. Another theme was that through all the data and politics, we try to laugh a little bit too. James says, I really want to support you because I love how you talk about politics, I like how you talk about data perception versus reality through polling and I love your humor. Jesse says, I love Galen's witty personality and sensible takes. I mean, come on. Witty personality, sensible takes. Put that on my dating app. I'm a politics junkie that prefers the shows I watch to be fun and informative. Whatever Galen has planned, I just know it's going to be good. John says, I really enjoyed your work. To date, the analysis was data driven with humor and rigor. Hard to find in today's opinion swap. Brendan says, I love hearing Galen go into the weeds of the science and art of surveying the public. His enthusiasm and humor are consistently endearing to this listener. And lastly, Rachel says, I really want to support you because I believe in you and I love you and you are my favorite cousin. Okay, well this is actually from my cousin Rachel and I'm glad to hear that I'm her favorite. We'll keep that between us. Hopefully none of the other cousins are listening to the podcast. Anyway. Join these listeners by becoming a paid subscriber today [e-mail] in fact do it right now. We will be here when you get back. That's GDPolitics.com and thank you. All right, you all had the audacity to ask Americans about their self perceptions compared to the average on a whole host of characteristics and abilities. So do Americans think they are trustworthy? Do they think they're loyal? How about good at driving or smart or good at math? Good at cooking? Good at running even. And you also of course have the cross tabs where you can see like do men or women think they're good at cooking or running? Do men or even Democrats or Republicans, do they think they're good at running? I like this kind of stuff. You know, I don't know that this informs our politics. I'm sure there's a way you could spin it but in general it helps us maybe understand the world around us in a non political way which you know I'm, I'm always game for. What were the overarching trends that you found in terms of how Americans conceive of themselves?

[Carl Bialik]

Americans are much more likely to think they're above average than below average. I don't know.

[Galen Drew]

Cue the USA Chants Here, what is self love? Self love.

[Carl Bialik]

I one striking. So, you know, some of the ones where this is most extreme, I think are the ones where there's no accepted measure and there's no like time in life where you're measured. So you know, you can't just sort of look around and say, well, my score is actually pretty low on this, so I guess I'm below average. So, you know, trustworthiness is really high. And that seems like one where it's easy to overrate your ability relative to other people because you don't really have a sense of how they compare.

[Galen Drew]

Holy. 77% of Americans said they were above average on the trustworthiness scale, which mathematicians in the audience know that that is not possible.

[Carl Bialik]

And 3% say below average, also not possible. We did let people say they're about average and some people chose that. Yeah. And then if you look at running, which you mentioned, like that one really struck me because I didn't necessarily think that would be one of the most extreme in the other direction. But it looks like 57% say they're below average in running and 15% say they're above average, which I guess is also possible. It's not possible. But if you compare yourself to people who run, which is a small subset of the population, or people who run regularly, then you will probably be below average. So yeah, I mean, I think while it was like 51 out of the 60 categories, I think people were more likely to say above than below average, whereas they should balance out. And then there were gender splits as you, as you hinted at, men were generally more likely to say above average than women were, but it wasn't universal by any means. But it was kind of disappointingly split around stereotypical lines on a lot of categories.

[Galen Drew]

Wait, you say disappointingly like these are Americans own self conceptions. So I guess it's Americans have either been socialized into viewing themselves cross stereotypical lines or people are truly end up being above or below average on these things because it's what we stress for people. Or you can take the position that it's just what, you know, men or women intuitively want to do. You know, we don't have to get into like gender politics here, although we also can. But it was, you know, women said that they were above average at a higher rate than men on being nurturing, on cooking, on empathy, reading, time management. Importantly, men were more likely than women by a significant clip to say they were above average on intelligence. Oof, that's harsh. Self discipline, sense of humor, what else? Sense of humor. All right, guys.

[Carl Bialik]

And I like that self awareness, too, is on the, on that list.

[Galen Drew]

Self awareness was on the. Okay, so Taylor, get in here. Put. Put these men in their place.

[Taylor Orth]

I, I don't know. Men are more likely to think that they're persuasive. I don't know if I'm the right person to, to win. Yeah, I mean, the survey, the survey doesn't say anything about the reasons why we, we, we really can't. Can't speculate on that. But, but I do think that, you know, when we designed this debate with this was kind of the thing that I was, I was most interested in was to see these, these gender gaps. And, you know, they kind of bore out how we maybe expected.

[Carl Bialik]

And I did say disappointingly. But I guess, like, two things. First of all, I just meant it would be interesting for the story if we had more surprises. That was, that was really. I mean, like, it's. This does make sense and this does feel like valid results. Some of these gaps are not that big. So, yes, like, more men are more likely to say they're above average in sense of humor. We're talking about like 67% versus 53%. Most women still think they're above average in sense of humor. So it's not these giant gulfs. So maybe that is sort of a counterbalance. And yeah, I mean, driving was kind of rude.

[Galen Drew]

There was a 15 point gap on driving.

[Carl Bialik]

Yeah. And I mean, people have grown up in a society that is pushing these as, as actual gaps, as you said, whatever the actual cause, like, it does seem to reflect that I'm going to.

[Galen Drew]

Take the bold position and say I'm a below average driver. So, you know, I'm definitely below average. I'll lead the charge. Any other men out there who want to say that they are lower than average in mechanical ability, athletic ability, self discipline, mathematic ability. Ooh, there was a really big gap in mathematic ability. Oh, no. It was also 15. 15 percentage points. Yeah. Interesting stuff here. There was also something out there for parents to grab a hold of, which is the difference in how people responded based on whether or not they said their parents complimented them or praised them frequently when they were children. What did you find there?

[Carl Bialik]

Yeah, a lot of people find it difficult to take a compliment, and it turns out that that's strong. Strongly related to how much they were praised as children. And in a positive direction. The more you were praised, the more you find it easy to take a compliment as an adult, which is like the direction you'd expect. But I was surprised by the strength of the relationship.

[Galen Drew]

Well, and particularly on which topics the relationship was strongest, which were attractiveness, public speaking, charisma, an organization. So you might think that politicians weren't praised enough as children and so they need that validation, but perhaps they were praised too much.

[Taylor Orth]

Yeah, we really should look at this by occupation. I'd be curious to see those, you know, like comedians would be an interesting one.

[Galen Drew]

Right? Like is this, is this a result of too much praise or too little?

[Carl Bialik]

Well, you know, public speaking is one of the ones where people were relatively not very confident in their own abilities overall. So. And you know, compared to average. So this is a thing where like they're surrounded by people who don't think they're very good public speakers and yet they still don't feel very confident about their own abilities. So praising children leads to better, you know, self assessment on public speaking. Feels like, you know, a good reason to praise children.

[Galen Drew]

I want to shout out one more survey that you did, which is a survey that you do every year, which is trust in media. I have to imagine that since the entrance of GD politics onto the scene, Americans are far more trustworthy of media. You know, there's a ray of light in the media landscape that wasn't there last year. You're allowed to laugh. Hahaha. But anyway, full of dad jokes today. What was the top line takeaway, Taylor, from that survey?

[Taylor Orth]

Yeah, well overall compared to last year, the results have been relatively consistent in terms of which outlets Americans are most likely and least likely to trust. The Weather Channel still tops the list as the by far the most trusted news outlet in our survey. Some of the other top outlets, BBC, pbs, Forbes. Whereas at the bottom, next year, next year we'll get in there and then towards the bottom of the list, you know, National Enquirer has been consistently rated as the least trustworthy news source.

[Galen Drew]

And there was an interesting trend which is overall a lot of these outlets experienced an increase in their trustworthy. There were some notable exceptions, ABC and also the Washington Post. But you know, across the board it looks like there's increased trust in a lot of these individual outcomes outlet. What do you chalk that up to?

[Taylor Orth]

I think part of it could be the fact that last year was an election year. So you know, last year we kind of saw a little bit of a decrease across all these outlets and this year we saw a little bit of an increase. And I think one possible explanation which we haven't tested and I'm not sure how we would test, but is that during an election year, people are watching the news a lot, maybe, and frustrated with the news and the coverage and may feel a little bit more negatively towards news outlets.

[Carl Bialik]

That's the main one I've got. Yeah. I mean, I think based on our experience putting out polling data directly or with media partners, last year it was so much like, is this good or bad for my team? And why did you push things that way or the other way? And this year I felt like there's a bit more engagement on the substance. And we're not ourselves a traditional media outlet. We didn't poll about trust in us, but I do think that we have a little bit of a taste of how people, or at least some people, are consuming news and thinking about news sources when there's a big election versus when there isn't.

[Galen Drew]

And it's worth keeping in mind here if we want to put a silver lining on the public's relation shipped to the media. When you ask about trust in media as an institution overall, we know from recent Gallup polling, you know, it's never been lower or it's almost never been lower. But when you ask about individual organizations, there is a decent amount of trust out there. And so maybe we've become so obsessed with this idea that there's no trust in the media that that's just how everyone responds. But when you ask, like, there are a lot of outlets out there where people feel comfortable getting decent, quality information. Right. Is that.

[Taylor Orth]

Yeah.

[Galen Drew]

Is that a fair takeaway?

[Taylor Orth]

I think one other way to put that is that people generally trust the news that they consume. So we find that users of each of these news outlets overall in the poll, we ask everyone about all of these sources, regardless of whether or not they use them. But we also break out the results based on whether or not they're users of that news outlet in the past month. And there is where we see the really big divide of the people who use each outlet. They have a lot more trust in each of them than the people who don't. So I think what could be going on in part is that people have a lot of trust in the news that they consume and a lot of distrust in news outlets that they choose not to consume.

[Galen Drew]

So, yeah, and my silver linings.

[Carl Bialik]

No, it. I think the lining is quite silver because the overall trust scores, even including the people who don't use them, are still on average, positive for the ones we pull about. I do think some of what might account for the gap you're describing, Galen is that the social media scores are not as good and a lot of people are getting a lot of their news on social media so they'll feel good about like a traditional news outlet, but then they're actually getting a lot of news from lots of sources, including ones that aren't on our list through social media or through posts from people they know on social media and not feeling very good about that. And then there's also just like a big long tail of news and news like sources that we're not going to be able to include because not enough people know about them. And my guess is those average trust scores are quite a bit lower. And that's some of what people are thinking about when they're reacting to news. Over all.

[Taylor Orth]

Yeah, it is difficult to pull, I'd say, with how fractured the media environments become, you know, with everyone having their own separate news sources that they, they go to online or influencers or podcasts or, you know. So I think it gets increasingly difficult to. To measure over time, I would say.

[Galen Drew]

Yeah. And isn't that the case with so much. But we're going to leave it there there for today. Thank you so much, Carl and Taylor, for joining me.

[Carl Bialik]

I really appreciate it. Thank you, Galen.

[Taylor Orth]

Yeah, great time.

[Galen Drew]

My name is Galen Druke. I'm in the early days of getting this podcast off the ground and I appreciate your support in any way possible. Subscribe to GD Politics wherever you get your podcast and if you'd be so kind to rate and review us, maybe even tell a friend about the podcast. Also importantly, subscribe to the [e-mail] there you'll get updates on what we're doing extras, and you can support this project directly. Thanks for listening and we will see you soon.