Public support for liberal policymaking at 60-year high, survey says

Americans’ support for liberal policymaking has reached a 60-year high, according to a new survey.

Vox reported that public support for more regulation, higher taxes and more social services reached the highest level on record in the latest edition of Policy Mood, an aggregate overview of American opinion based on a range of polls on a variety of issues.

According to Vox, the finding was first reported by James Stimson, a political scientist at the University of North Carolina who has published numerous books on public opinion research.{mosads}

“The annual estimate for 2018 is the most liberal ever recorded in the 68 year history of Mood,” he wrote. “Just slightly higher than the previous high point of 1961.”

Stimson added that the results represent the “expected leftward movement in thermostatic reaction to the Presidency of Donald Trump” but added that it would not be seen only as a personal reaction to the president, as the estimates do not include “Trump’s signature issues of immigration restriction and trade protectionism.”

The Policy Mood survey attempts to measure the public’s opinion based on aggregating a number of answers to different questions from significant academic surveys, like the General Social Survey and the American National Election Survey, and polls done by commercial pollsters, according to Vox.

According to Stimson, public opinion acts like a thermostat, Vox noted. The data shows that public opinion tends to move leftward when a Republican is in office or the bent of economic policy lurches to the right. The opposite tends to occur when a Democratic president holds office or liberal policies are enacted.