Most people don’t think poor families have benefited at all from President Trump’s policies, new poll says

The following article by Eugene Scott was posted on the Washington Post website May 12, 2018:

President Trump ran on a promise to help families struggling economically land on better ground financially. New polling says most people do not think that is happening.

The president regularly boasts about economic gains made under his watch. After Republican primaries on Tuesday, Trump tweeted this:

A new Monmouth University poll shows few Americans feel poor families are winning as much as Trump claims the GOP is winning.

According to the poll:

Most Americans — 53 percent — say low-income families have not benefited at all from Trump’s policies. The poll, conducted April 26 to April 30, questioned 803 adults in the United States. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. Twelve percent of those surveyed say poor families have benefited a lot, and about a quarter (28 percent) say they have benefited a little.

This reality is quite different from what some people expected before Trump entered the White House.

In January 2017, another Monmouth poll showed about 1 in 5 Americans — 21 percent — expected poor families to see a lot of benefit from the new president’s policies, and 36 percent expected poor families to benefit a little.

Despite a relatively strong economy, about 1 in 4 (24 percent) people say they are struggling to remain where they are financially.

“The outlook for Americans’ financial situation has not changed all that much since Trump took office. And because everything is driven by partisanship these days, Republicans have a rosier view of their own situation than Democrats, even though some objective measures suggest they may be in the same boat,” said Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute.

In 2016, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton won the working-class vote, according to exit polls. A sizable percentage of Americans from low-income households supported Trump, in part looking for a cure for their economic anxiety.

Just before the 2016 election, The Washington Post wrote:

“Trump supporters are more likely to emerge from places with low levels of intergenerational mobility, where poor children struggle to move up the socioeconomic ladder. They also tend to hail from places where middle-aged whites are dying faster. There is real suffering in these communities, a real sense that something has gone wrong. Just because Trump supporters have some income doesn’t disqualify them from feeling vulnerable.”

Since then, polling shows many poor families do not believe that Trump has offered much of a solution to their vulnerability.

In March, CNBC’s All-America Economic Survey found most respondents — 52 percent — have seen no change at all in their paychecks despite $1.5 trillion in GOP tax cuts. While Trump often touts the successes of the stock market under his administration, rarely does he acknowledge that the majority of Americans — especially those from low-income families — are not invested in the stock market.

And while Trump often tweets about historic lows in the country’s unemployment rate and job openings hitting record highs, many low-income people are still struggling to land the types of jobs that have the ability to pull them out of poverty.

Trump may retain the support of working-class voters who backed him in 2016. It was not solely his economic message that led them to back the president. If he runs in 2020, he will want to show he made America great for everyone, and the poll numbers suggest he will have a challenge.