What Do Americans Really Want - Poll
What Polling Podcast
On this Monday’s episode of my podcast, “A Number’s Game,” I invited Brent Buchanan, the founder and CEO of Cygnal polling, to discuss how Americans feel about several hot-button issues.
Brent allowed me to select several questions for the poll before the interview. This is a big deal because these polls typically cost tens of thousands of dollars, and it was an honor to be allowed to include several questions. Being the nerd that I am, I jumped at the chance.
The questions I asked were the following:
The first question was: America brings in about 1 million legal immigrants annually. Is that number too high, too low, or about right? Then, I asked how many legal immigrants America should bring in per year, with the options being Zero, 100,000, 250,000, 500,000, 1,000,000, 5,000,000, or unlimited.
I asked that question. Many pollsters ask whether you want more or less immigration but rarely give the context of how many we currently bring in, and even fewer ask voters about their desired levels.
The only major poll in the last few years to do this was by the Cato Institute of all places. Cato is a libertarian think tank that wants open borders and would love the United States to look like Honduras or Angola or something, regularly rooting against any form of border security or reduced levels of immigration.
That 2021 poll found that 9 percent of Americans wanted no immigration at all, 44 percent wanted a 90 percent reduction or greater, and 61 percent wanted a 50 percent reduction or more.
Next, I asked how Americans feel about the future of artificial intelligence and whether it invokes a positive, neutral, or negative emotion.
This is extremely important because aside from polling firms sponsored by tech companies, I never see this question asked.
Building on that, I asked Americans whether they think Big Tech and social media companies need to be more heavily regulated because- and I can’t emphasize this enough there are almost no regulations on social media companies.
Lastly, I asked if Americans would be willing to pay higher prices to bring more jobs to the U.S.
Here were their findings to those questions:
Americans are split when you ask them how they’d change or not change the number of people who come to the U.S. from legal immigration:
But when asked how many they’d like to see come into the U.S., about 60 percent favor some reduction, with over 40 percent wanting at least a 50 percent reduction. Among Republicans, 51 percent favor at least a 75 percent reduction in legal immigration.
When asked if they’d trade higher prices for more U.S. jobs, Americans were split on party lines, with Republicans and Trump supporters saying yes and Democrats and black voters saying no.
Americans are far less optimistic about the future of artificial intelligence than some politicians might have you believe.
There’s overwhelming support for more regulation of big tech and social media companies in this area. Still, I believe that because of Elon Musk, Republicans are more optimistic about tech than they were in previous election cycles.
My Analysis
Looking at the poll results, this would be my best advice for Republicans in Congress:
Americans want lower levels of legal immigration, but they’re not going to flat out and say it. It’s clear that Republican voters will back up any politician calling for immigration reduction, and there’s little to no backlash you’re going to face from the broader public by slashing legal immigration. Being hyperbolic has its place, but it’s not necessary because Americans don’t hate immigrants; they want less of them. Now is the time to greatly reduce legal immigration.
Artificial Intelligence may be the future, but Americans aren’t completely happy about it and still distrust big tech. As more documentaries are released about social media’s influence on young people, this will only bring greater scrutiny. Americans like the convenience tech brings to their lives but are worried about how it’s changing our future. Innovative reforms to big tech, social media, and AI companies are really popular with voters.
Trump has created a partisan divide regarding reshoring jobs back to the United States, and it’s unlikely to change anytime soon. That’s why, as I wrote in my op-ed for The American Conservative Magazine, the Trump Administration should be looking at the power of federal contracts to reshore domestic manufacturing as a means to improve the production of specific industries and make us less dependent on China.