Fifty-three percent of Americans say the tax overhaul Republicans pushed through in December will have a negative impact on the U.S. — deficits and unbalanced benefits for the wealthy and large corporations — versus 39 percent who say it will have the positive effects of a stronger economy, more jobs, and more pocket change, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. Overall, 27 percent called the tax bill a good idea, down from 30 percent in January, while 36 percent called it a bad idea.
For a Republican Party that has said it hopes to ride the tax cuts to victory in November, this is "not a great starting point," said Democratic pollster Fred Yang, who conducted the survey with GOP pollster Bill McInturff. The tax overhaul was popular among a majority of men, unpopular with a larger majority of women, and opposed by rural Americans, older men, the working class, middle class, and upper class; women with college degrees dislike is by a nearly 3-to-1 margin. The poll, of 900 Americas, was conducted by telephone April 8-11, and it carries a margin of error of ±3.27 percentage points.
A new SurveyMonkey poll for The New York Times was more positive — 48 percent approve and 47 percent disapprove. But "that is down from a 51 percent approval rating in February, and it suggests that the law may have hit a high-water mark among voters — if they're even thinking about it anymore," the Times says. President "Trump has lost some interest in the $1.5 trillion tax overhaul that he signed into law last year — even though the White House keeps scheduling events to promote it," and "the country is right there with him." There's "a brief flurry of activity" planned around tax day, the Times notes, but "by all sorts of metrics" — cable news coverage, Google searches, Trump comments — "Americans aren't talking very much about a law that Republicans had hoped to make a centerpiece of their midterm election message."