New Poll Delivers Bad News to Socialists
A vast majority of American likely voters have an unfavorable view of socialism, and a plurality view Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York unfavorably, according to a new poll.
A survey conducted earlier this month by Rasmussen Reports and The Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank, found that the kinds of policies touted by Democrats such as Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont are not popular among a majority of voters.
Unpopular, in fact, might be an understatement.
Socialism is actually less popular than Congress, which currently enjoys an approval rating of 15 percent, according to the most recent Gallup survey on the matter.
In asking the question, “Which is better — a free-market economic system or socialism?,” Rasmussen/Heartland found that only 11 percent of likely voters preferred socialism.
Of those polled, 75 percent said they preferred a “free-market economic system.”
All told, this means 89 percent of likely voters cannot get onboard 100 percent with a system that places a balanced outcome over the American dream of endless prosperity.
The fact that three-quarters of those polled openly supported a free-market system in and of itself is actually quite surprising. The country has been through a nightmare of a year, and many people have looked to the government for a helping hand.
Still, the poll signals that those in favor of receiving that help from the government aren’t ready to crown their lawmakers as the overseers of their lives.
If there is one silver lining in watching the fledgling Congress attempt this year to find common ground in an attempt to help struggling Americans, it’s that most lawmakers have shown themselves to be very bad at their jobs.
Why give them even more power to influence our lives?
The poll also asked respondents, “Do you have a very favorable, somewhat favorable, somewhat unfavorable or very unfavorable impression of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?”
[O]nly 18% said ‘very favorable,’ while 19% said ‘somewhat favorable.’ On the other hand, 38% of likely voters said they have a ‘very unfavorable’ impression of AOC, and 10% said they have a ‘somewhat unfavorable’ impression of her. About 15% said they are not sure,” the poll noted.
Simply put, 63 percent of Americans couldn’t tell the pollsters that they viewed AOC favorably.
This is great news for a number of reasons. Chiefly, it shows that Americans have overall not been swayed by Democrats who champion surrendering economic and individual liberties in favor of blanket protection from the government.
Additionally, numbers such as these might help to rein in Democrats, should they seize control of the Congress and the White House next month, the latter of which they are widely projected to do, as presumptive president-elect Joe Biden is expected to be inaugurated on Jan. 20.
The Rasmussen/Heartland poll found that 51 percent of those polled viewed Biden favorably, while 47 percent viewed him unfavorably. Another 2 percent of respondents didn’t have an opinion one way or another — which means at best, Biden would step into the role of president with voters split on their opinions of him.
Should Biden be inaugurated, and should GOP Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue each lose their respective runoff races in Georgia in two weeks, then Democrats would control the House, the Senate — assuming a Vice President Kamala Harris breaks the tie on most votes — and the White House.
In such a scenario, public sentiment against big government policies might sway Democrats to govern with a more centrist approach. While not ideal when compared to four more years of President Donald Trump, it is highly likely that even though the country could soon be led by Democrats, they at least might be inclined to court a favorable public opinion to keep power.
But the message is loud and clear, despite what half of respondents might feel about Biden as a person.
The Democratic Party’s ideas, at least those of the party’s radical wing, are not popular.
The poll showing socialism in such an unfavorable light surely only raises more questions than answers when it comes to how Democrats supposedly toppled the president in last month’s election. The party, after all, lost Florida and Texas after they turned off Hispanic voters in part by embracing Marxist ideals all year. It still hasn’t been explained how that messaging win for Trump didn’t translate to victories in the Rust Belt.
With that being said, we can only evaluate the information we’ve been given, and right now, that information tells us that while Biden is expected to take over, he and his party’s loudest ideas could certainly torpedo any chance he has at enacting a sweeping overhaul of the federal government.
Biden is not popular with half of voters, while three-quarters of voters oppose the policies which his party’s rising stars champion with a great deal of regularity.
The Rasmussen/Heartland poll was conducted Dec. 6-7 among 1,000 likely U.S. voters. The survey reported a margin of error of plus- or minus-3 percentage points.
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