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Why do so many Republicans think Trump is more liberal than he is? [1]
['Daily Kos Staff']
Date: 2025-09-07
Survey Says is a weekly series rounding up the most important polling trends or data points you need to know about, plus a vibe check on a trend that’s driving politics.
Back in June 2015, it wasn’t easy to pin down President Donald Trump’s politics.
The celebrity businessman spent most of his public life discussing money, rather than policy. He hopped between parties, voted irregularly, and never truly committed to a single ideology. No surprise, then, that Americans weren’t sure what box to put him in.
Four years in the White House changed that. And since his return to the White House earlier this year, Trump has doubled down on a hard-right agenda—rolling back protections for LGBTQ+ people, cutting deals that benefit the wealthy, dismantling DEI initiatives, and pushing policies that are both anti-democratic and anti-Democratic. Whatever ambiguity existed a decade ago is long gone.
Related | Trump's just fine with queer kids killing themselves
And yet, a sizable share of Republicans still see Trump very differently. A late August YouGov poll shows just how off the mark GOP voters are about his record. According to the survey, 35% of Republicans think Trump supports raising the minimum wage, 45% believe he backs stronger worker protections, 26% say he favors higher corporate taxes, and just 29% think he’d raise taxes on the wealthy.
In reality, Trump’s record runs the other way. His administration moved to strip minimum wage and overtime protections from 3.7 million home-care and domestic workers. He killed a plan to stop employers from paying disabled workers less than the $7.25-an-hour federal minimum wage. And his sweeping tax and budget plan—officially called the The One Big Beautiful Bill Act—is expected to deliver the largest transfer of wealth from working-class Americans to the ultrawealthy in U.S. history.
President Donald Trump signs his budget bill that is expected to be the biggest transfer of wealth in U.S. history.
The disconnect is striking. Democrats and independents are much more accurate in gauging Trump’s positions. The same YouGov poll found only 9% of Democrats and 17% of independents believe Trump supports stronger worker protections. Just 10% of Democrats and 18% of independents think he favors raising the minimum wage.
In other words, Democrats and independents generally see Trump for who he is. Republicans, not so much.
So why the misperception? Grant Reeher, a professor of political science at Syracuse University, said it comes down to polarization and “expressive bias.”
“I imagine what’s happening among many Republicans is that they start with the notion that they are supporters of Trump,” Reeher told Daily Kos. “Then, when they are asked what he wants to do in those specific policy areas, they choose what they would like to see happen, and assume that’s also what Trump wants to do, because they support Trump.”
That’s the polarization effect at work.
Expressive bias takes it further. Popular policies—like raising the minimum wage or taxing corporations—are often attributed to Trump by Republicans who want to reinforce their support.
“Some of them may recognize that raising the minimum wage, improving worker conditions, and raising the tax on corporations are popular positions, and then assert that Trump wants to do those things—again because they support Trump and want to show that support, rather than stating that Trump wants to do something less popular,” Reeher said.
Reeher added that some Republicans may be connecting dots that don’t actually line up. For example, seeing Trump’s tough talk on immigration or manufacturing as proof that he wants to raise wages.
“Some voters seem to translate Trump’s rhetoric into policies he doesn’t actually support—like assuming support for blue-collar workers means raising the minimum wage, or that calling out corporations means taxing them,” Reeher said.
Related | Trump’s tariffs hit his blue-collar backers where it hurts
This isn’t entirely new. Democrats were privately fuming about it during the 2024 campaign. A New York Times/Siena College survey that September found just under one-in-three (32%) likely voters thought Trump was “too conservative,” compared with 47% who said former Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris was “too liberal.” It was a striking data point, one that helped reinforce the narrative that Trump was a more moderate option than Harris—even as his actual record said otherwise.
We saw shades of the same phenomenon in 2021, when millions of Americans insisted the 2020 election was “stolen.” For many, the claim was less about genuine belief in voter fraud and more about signaling allegiance to Trump.
Rioters loyal to Trump rally at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Jan. 6, 2021, who claimed the election was “stolen.”
As Reeher put it, this kind of bias isn’t necessarily about facts—it’s about expressing loyalty.
Framing matters too. People like the idea of “worker protections” in theory, but they may not connect that principle to actual policies. Moves like weakening OSHA rules, loosening child labor restrictions, or undermining wage standards don’t sound like “pro-worker” positions when spelled out plainly. It’s easier for supporters to say Trump is “for workers” in the abstract, even when his policies cut against them in practice.
By contrast, Democrats’ policy positions are far less muddled in the public mind. The same YouGov survey found adults across the political spectrum generally understood where Democrats stand: 86% of Democrats, 65% of independents, and 63% of Republicans knew that Democrats want to increase the minimum wage. Similar majorities across partisan groups also knew Democrats want to raise taxes on corporations and the wealthy. Even if voters don’t always like Democrats’ positions, they tend to know what they are.
That’s what makes Republicans’ perception of Trump so revealing. If GOP voters truly believe he’s more liberal than he is, it suggests two things: Either Republicans want policies like higher wages and stronger worker protections but don’t realize Trump opposes them, or they don’t know enough about his record to notice the gap between rhetoric and reality.
“Many polls over recent decades have suggested that the public is generally supportive of more liberal policies when those policies are described in objective ways,” Reeher said. “Whether that means Republicans should adopt those policies is a more complicated question—historically, they have been arguing for a more conservative approach.”
The bigger issue here is a lack of political literacy. Most voters don’t follow the fine print of economic or labor policy closely enough to see where the parties really split. That gap makes it easy for misperceptions to take hold—and for partisan loyalty and Trump’s branding to fill in the blanks.
A Trump stunt: Cosplaying a McDonald’s worker during the 2024 campaign.
John Mark Hansen, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, told Daily Kos that with unions representing just 6% of private-sector workers, very few Americans hear consistently pro-worker messaging outside of partisan politics. Into that void, Trump has filled the space with performative stunts that sound worker-friendly. But when it comes to actual policy, his record tells a different story.
“Most people have very limited information about policies, particularly in areas that don’t affect them,” Hansen said. “Partisans tend to fall back on party talking points when they don’t know or care much. How else did a chest-thumping party of Russia haters come to champion Putin as America’s best friend?”
In the end, the polling says less about Trump’s policies than about how voters see themselves reflected in him. What this survey and other surveys suggest is that Trump supporters project their own preferences onto him—even when those preferences are at odds with his actual record. That gap between perception and reality isn’t just a quirk of polling—it’s a feature of today’s politics: Facts often take a back seat to identity.
Any updates?
Fresh polling from the Wall Street Journal–NORC shows Americans sinking deeper into economic gloom. Only 25% say they have a good chance of improving their standard of living—the lowest share since the survey began in 1987. Nearly eight in 10 (78%) doubt the next generation will be better off, and close to 70% say the American dream either never existed or no longer does, the most skepticism recorded in 15 years. The discontent cuts broadly across gender, age, education, and income. Still, the outlook isn’t entirely bleak. Forty-four percent now describe the economy as excellent or good, an uptick from 38% a year ago. Yet most adults—56%—continue to rate conditions as poor, underscoring how Trump’s economic policies are weighing on public sentiment.
Over the holiday weekend, rumors circulated that Trump had died—claims the president himself said earlier this week he had heard nothing about. While Trump remains very much alive, his health has come under scrutiny after he was seen with bruising on the back of his right hand and swelling around his ankles. Ongoing questions about his age and fitness have led some voters to wonder if he’s fully capable of handling the job as president. A YouGov poll found that 59% of adults believe Trump’s health and age affect his ability to do the job, at least somewhat, while about a quarter (26%) say it hasn’t affected him at all. As expected, opinions vary sharply along party lines, with Republicans much less likely to see an impact. Still, if a transition were necessary, most GOP voters trust Vice President JD Vance: 75% of Republicans told YouGov that he is qualified to take over, compared with just 10% of Democrats.
Trump and his allies have been blunt about wanting women—especially white women—to have more kids. And new Gallup polling shows that even with falling birth rates, Americans still like the idea of bigger families. A plurality now says the “ideal” family size is two or three children—down from three or four back in 1935—but the point is clear: People still want families, despite Republican talking points suggesting otherwise.
Vibe check
As of midday Friday, 44.3% of the Americans approved of Trump, while 51.3% disapproved—a net approval rating of -6.9 points, after rounding, according to election analyst Nate Silver’s polling average.
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