Americans generally agree with a federal appeals court’s decision not to reinstate President Donald Trump’s travel ban, according to a new HuffPost/YouGov poll, although opinions on the ban itself remain mixed.
By a modest 6-point margin, 45 percent to 39 percent, respondents say the court made the right decision in refusing to reinstate Trump’s March executive order suspending refugee admissions and banning travel to the U.S. by non-visa-holders from six Muslim-majority countries. Judges in Hawaii and Maryland halted key provisions of the order before the ban could go into effect.
A 57 percent majority of Americans are aware that the ban is not currently in effect, while 14 percent believe that it is, and 29 percent are unsure about its current status.
Just over half of those polled say the judicial system should have the power to halt the ban, while about one-third say it should not.
“Laid bare, this Executive Order is no more than what the President promised before and after his election: naked invidious discrimination against Muslims,” U.S. Circuit Judge James Wynn wrote in a concurring opinion that the ban is likely unconstitutional. “Such discrimination contravenes the authority Congress delegated to the President in the Immigration and Nationality Act ... and it is unconstitutional under the Establishment Clause.”
Most Americans, 52 percent, believe the ban is intended to target Muslims, with just 31 percent saying they don’t believe it is.
Still, opinions about the ban itself remain split and have changed little from past HuffPost/YouGov surveys, with 44 percent in favor and 43 percent opposing the ban. (For a variety of reasons, different pollsters have found significantly varying responses to the measure, with HuffPost/YouGov surveys registering among the lowest levels of opposition.)
Views of all aspects of the travel ban remain deeply divided along political lines. Ninety-four percent of Trump voters, for instance, approve of the ban, compared to just 9 percent of those who supported Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in last year’s election. Eighty-nine percent of Clinton voters, but just 16 percent of Trump voters, believe the judicial system should have the power to halt the ban.
Both sides, however, are unhappy with the way the order has been carried out so far. Just one-quarter of Americans, including 13 percent of Clinton voters and 36 percent of Trump voters, think the government has done a very or somewhat good job of carrying it out. Twenty-three percent of Americans say the government has not done a very good job, with another 30 percent saying it has not done a good job at all.
Use the widget below to further explore the results of the HuffPost/YouGov survey, using the menu at the top to select survey questions and the buttons at the bottom to filter the data by subgroups:
The HuffPost/YouGov poll consisted of 1,000 completed interviews conducted May 25-26 among U.S. adults, using a sample selected from YouGov’s opt-in online panel to match the demographics and other characteristics of the adult U.S. population.
HuffPost has teamed up with YouGov to conduct daily opinion polls.You can learn more about this project and take part in YouGov’s nationally representative opinion polling. Data from all HuffPost/YouGov polls can be found here. More details on the polls’ methodology are available here.
Most surveys report a margin of error that represents some, but not all, potential survey errors. YouGov’s reports include a model-based margin of error, which rests on a specific set of statistical assumptions about the selected sample, rather than the standard methodology for random probability sampling. If these assumptions are wrong, the model-based margin of error may also be inaccurate. Click here for a more detailed explanation of the model-based margin of error.