Americans reject President Donald Trump’s planned White House ballroom by a 2-to-1 margin, according to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll, and they appear largely unmoved by the intensified calls from the president and his allies in Congress to allow the project to go forward.
Fifty-six percent of Americans oppose Trump’s decision to tear down the White House’s East Wing to make way for his planned ballroom, funded by about $400 million in private donations, while 28 percent support the project. That is the same division found in an October poll. Reactions are split among partisan lines; about two-thirds of Republicans support the project, while 61 percent of independents and 87 percent of Democrats oppose it.
There is also a notable enthusiasm gap: Nearly three times as many people “strongly” oppose the project as strongly support it, the poll found.
The poll was conducted Friday through Tuesday, overlapping Saturday’s shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. Trump and his allies have cited the incident as evidence that his ballroom is needed for a president to hold secure events, and a bevy of GOP lawmakers this week introduced legislation to authorize the project or use taxpayer funding to pay for it.
Republican support for the ballroom grew after Saturday’s incident — from 62 percent to 72 percent, the poll found — but overall there was not a clear shift in support for the project. Before the dinner, support stood at 27 percent. It moved to 31 percent afterward, but respondents who completed the survey after the attack were more likely to be Republicans and Trump voters. A statistical analysis accounting for that shift in the sample’s political and demographic makeup found no significant change in opinion associated with the shooting.
Fifty-six percent of Americans oppose Trump’s decision to tear down the White House’s East Wing to make way for his planned ballroom, funded by about $400 million in private donations, while 28 percent support the project. That is the same division found in an October poll. Reactions are split among partisan lines; about two-thirds of Republicans support the project, while 61 percent of independents and 87 percent of Democrats oppose it.
There is also a notable enthusiasm gap: Nearly three times as many people “strongly” oppose the project as strongly support it, the poll found.
The poll was conducted Friday through Tuesday, overlapping Saturday’s shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. Trump and his allies have cited the incident as evidence that his ballroom is needed for a president to hold secure events, and a bevy of GOP lawmakers this week introduced legislation to authorize the project or use taxpayer funding to pay for it.
Republican support for the ballroom grew after Saturday’s incident — from 62 percent to 72 percent, the poll found — but overall there was not a clear shift in support for the project. Before the dinner, support stood at 27 percent. It moved to 31 percent afterward, but respondents who completed the survey after the attack were more likely to be Republicans and Trump voters. A statistical analysis accounting for that shift in the sample’s political and demographic makeup found no significant change in opinion associated with the shooting.
