It’s an axiom of American politics that you can’t get elected by promising to raise voters’ taxes. Yet Donald Trump could do just that. One of his main economic planks is a sharp increase in tariffs on imports, which could raise a typical family’s costs by more than $2,000 per year. That doesn’t seem to be hurting Trump: The Republican presidential nominee is in a dead heat with his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.
A paradox of Trump’s unorthodox campaign is that many of his supporters back policies that could directly or indirectly make them worse off. We wanted to dig into why, so we ran an online survey of more than 6,000 Yahoo Finance users to ask their views on three of Trump’s key economic planks: higher tariffs on imports, deporting millions of undocumented migrants, and repealing or changing the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
We found huge gaps in attitudes between Trump and Harris voters. Some Trump voters feel so strongly about his policies that they support them even if they’d cause economic harm. Other Trump voters reject economists’ claims about the likely damage they’d cause. And undecided voters who could end up deciding this year’s election outcome seem partly swayed by Trump’s often misleading rhetoric on what his plans would accomplish.
Here's a summary breakdown of how voters feel on these three core issues. Among Harris voters, 97% think Trump’s tariffs would raise prices and ding family budgets. That’s what most economists say would happen. But only 4% of Trump voters feel tariffs would raise prices and cause them harm, on net. Undecided voters are right in the middle, with 44% saying tariffs would raise their costs.
The gaps were smaller but still pronounced on the other two issues. Economists warn that the mass deportation Trump promises would remove workers from the labor force and shrink GDP. Harris voters seem to agree. Only 6% of Harris voters think the nation should deport undocumented migrants even if it harms the economy, but 45% of Trump voters feel that way, as if any harm to the economy is worth whatever the gain would be from deporting migrants.
On the ACA, basically no Harris voters want to repeal or even change it. But 15% of Trump voters want to modify the ACA, even if it means fewer people will end up with health insurance. Again, the assumption seems to be that gains from repealing or changing the ACA would outweigh any losses.
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump dances at a campaign event at the Ryder Center at Saginaw Valley State University, Thursday, Oct. 3, 2024, in University Center, Mich. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio) ·ASSOCIATED PRESS
Since we polled Yahoo Finance users rather than the general public, our survey is more like a large focus group than a scientific poll. Our respondents lean more toward Harris than the broader public, with 56% saying they plan to vote for Harris. That still left 1,929 respondents, or 32%, saying they’d vote for Trump and explaining why they support his policies. About 8% said they were undecided, and 4% said they’d be voting for somebody else.
Our respondents were wealthier and better educated than the typical American. Fifty-six percent reported income above $100,000 and 79% said they have a college degree, reflecting an audience focused on investing and economics. This group of respondents is likely better informed about the intricacies of economic policy than the general public.
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris waves as she departs after speaking at a campaign rally at Ripon College, Thursday, Oct. 3, 2024, in Ripon, Wis. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall) ·ASSOCIATED PRESS
We dug deeper into each of these three issues to learn more about why voters do or don’t support each of the three policies. On tariffs, for instance, 47% of Trump voters think that adding levies on imports won’t raise prices. That suggests nearly half of all Trump voters believe the former president when he says foreign producers pay tariffs, not American importers or consumers. That’s generally false; importing firms pay tariffs to the US Treasury and pass on as much of the cost as they can to their own customers, all the way to consumers buying retail products.
On undocumented migrants, 50% of Trump voters think deporting them would be beneficial to the economy, on net. It’s possible that some native-born Americans might take jobs left open by deported migrants, as Trump claims, or earn a bit more if they weren’t competing with lower-paid migrants. But the United States also has a low-unemployment economy in which some firms can’t get enough workers. So worker shortages could be another result.
Economists also broadly agree that more immigration — even if it’s not legal — generates a bigger workforce of people who buy more stuff and push GDP growth higher. That’s not an argument in favor of illegal immigration. But most undocumented migrants work and contribute to the economy, and abruptly excising them from the labor force would be disruptive in industries such as agriculture, retail, and healthcare than rely upon them.
Trump has been cagier about the Affordable Care Act, which now helps more than 40 million Americans get health insurance. He tried and failed to repeal the ACA during his first presidential term and said earlier this year he would try to do that again if he got a second term. Yet his campaign has recently signaled that maybe it'd leave the ACA more or less intact, which tracks with the growing popularity of the program.
Nonetheless, a majority of Trump voters still want to change or repeal the ACA. Forty-seven percent of them think ditching the ACA would improve the US healthcare system, even though Trump has never developed his own healthcare plan. And 15% of Trump voters want to get rid of the ACA even if it leaves fewer people insured.
These findings generally mesh with other analyses of Trump’s bombastic style and his appeal to Americans fed up with institutions they view as failing. Trump voters tend to distrust authorities, including economists, and dismiss their analysis as stilted. They don’t always take Trump literally and give him the benefit of the doubt when he pitches ideas that seem more designed to “own the libs” than be fully implemented.
On the other hand, Trump is offering a more extreme economic agenda than during his first run for office in 2016, and learnings from his first term could lead to much faster implementation of risky measures in a second. If Trump voters get their way, 2025 is likely to bring the biggest experiment in Trumpism yet.
