By Jason Lange and James Oliphant
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Donald Trump’s expansion of executive power, including his unprecedented push to send troops into U.S. cities to combat crime and his attempt to seize control of aspects of the economy, has left Americans uneasy, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll found.
The findings suggest that a substantial majority of the public favors limits on presidential power and does not approve of Trump’s efforts to shatter longstanding norms.
“President Trump has not
convinced most Americans that there is an emergency in this country that requires greatly expanded presidential power to address,” said David Hopkins, a political scientist at Boston College.
Over the last few weeks, Trump's administration has taken control of the Washington, D.C., police department and deployed National Guard troops to the city, claiming that crime there is out of control. He has discussed sending troops to Chicago and New Orleans as well.
On crime, only 32% of Americans said they would feel safer with armed soldiers deployed to large cities in their state, the poll found. Some 62% of Trump's fellow Republicans were warm to military patrols in big cities, but only one in four independents felt the same way, as did just one in 10 Democrats.
Only one in five respondents said they often feel unsafe because of high crime in their area, and just a third of people overall said they avoid big cities because of crime, suggesting that a majority of voters view crime as a remote phenomenon that does not affect them personally. About half of Republicans said they steer clear of large cities for fear of becoming victims.
"People agree that crime and safety are an issue, but they think Trump's abuse of power doesn't fix the problem, he makes it worse," said Jesse Ferguson, a veteran Democratic strategist.
Trump has also taken a strong hand in attempting to regulate the U.S. economy by pushing for the government to take a 10% stake in chipmaker Intel while demanding a cut of profits from Nvidia, another chipmaker, from its sales in China.
He has tried to pressure the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates and tried to fire a member of its board of governors following allegations the central banker committed mortgage fraud, a charge the official has denied.
The president has faced legal challenges to his tariffs across a range of nations, claiming trade imbalances constitute a national emergency. He has also threatened to retaliate against U.S. companies such as Apple if they don’t expand their domestic operations.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll found just 16% of Americans overall - including 2% of Democrats and 34% of Republicans - thought it would be good for the president to have power to set interest rates and tell companies where to manufacture products.
Trump’s overall approval rating remains stable at 42%, according to the poll, with nine in 10 Republicans supporting him.
“Even if citizens have concerns about urban crime or economic performance, they don’t view either issue as currently in a state of unprecedented crisis requiring unprecedented measures to resolve,” Boston College's Hopkins said.
“And while Trump certainly has a set of personal admirers who would happily grant him whatever powers he might seek, there are also many Republican voters who supported Trump in the last three elections but who don’t agree that he should be allowed to operate without limits.”
U.S. voters overwhelmingly want their president to respect the authority of federal courts, with nine in 10 Democrats and seven in 10 Republicans saying the president should abide by judicial rulings even if he disagrees with them.
Still, Republicans are more inclined to give Trump a free hand.
Asked if they were willing to give up some checks and balances in the U.S. democratic system to have a government that can take action faster, 39% of Republicans said they would take that offer, compared to 45% who rejected it. Only 17% of independents - and the same share of Democrats - liked the idea.
At the same time, voters of both parties are increasingly less likely to view the U.S. as exceptional.
Some 29% of people in the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll agreed with a statement that "America is the greatest country in the world," down from 38% in a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in November 2017, during Trump's first term in office.
The share of Democrats who agreed fell to 12% from 26% and among Republicans the share dropped to 55% from 59%.
The poll, which was conducted online and nationwide, gathered responses from 1,084 U.S. adults. It had a margin of error of 3 percentage points for all respondents, and between 5 and 6 points for Republicans, Democrats and independents.
(Reporting by Jason Lange and James Oliphant; editing by Scott Malone and Alistair Bell)
