Refugees

If You Disapprove of Trump's Refugee/Travel Ban, You're in the Minority

New polls shows 49 percent support, versus just 41 percent against...

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Zach Weissmueller, Reason TV

A poll of 1,200 Americans over the past two days finds that a plurality of Americans—49 percent—approve "strongly" or "somewhat" of Donald Trump's ban on all refugees and travelers from seven majority-Muslim countries. Just 41 percent oppose the action, part of which the administration has already walked back.

According to Reuters, the split runs tightly along partisan lines, with 51 percent of Republicans strongly agreeing with the executive order and 53 percent of Democrats strongly disagreeing. And how's this for feels?

The Reuters/Ipsos poll found 31 percent of Americans feel "more safe" because of the ban, compared with 26 percent who said they felt "less safe." Some 38 percent said they felt the United States was setting "a good example" of how best to confront terrorism, while 41 percent said the country was setting "a bad example."

Democrats were more than three times as likely as Republicans to say that the "U.S. should continue to take in immigrants and refugees," and Republicans were more than three times as likely as Democrats to agree that "banning people from Muslim countries is necessary to prevent terrorism."

We're already safer, despite the fact that since 1980, zero Americans have been killed in the United States by people admitted as refugees! More of us support the ban than abjure it, but more of us believe we're setting a "bad example." America, do you contradict yourself? Very well, then, you contradict yourself!

More results, and discussion of methodology, are here.

The executive order, which went into effect on Saturday at midnight, provoked demonstrations around the country and, as Reuters notes, a dozen states are looking into files lawsuits against it. Additionally, the acting attorney general was fired after stating she wouldn't enforce the law.

In Congress, most Democrats have spoken out against the ban; they've been joined by 40 or more Republicans. That number is likely to go down if and when more people watch this awful video (courtesy of Fox News) of Nancy Pelosi and Charles Schumer working a crowd to sing "This Land Is Your Land" and attempting to show "the real people" affected by the ban.

This is one of those moments when I'd rather be right than popular. Trump's order is based on hysteria and panders to the worst sort of xenophobia at work in the dark night of the American psyche. As important, it hurts our efforts in fighting Islamic terrorism by alienating allies in the Middle East.