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A new Fox News poll shows that American voters, including core Republican constituencies, are turning against cutting retirement spending to reduce the deficit, instead calling for preserving programs like Social Security and Medicare at their current levels.
The survey finds double-digit shifts in U.S. public opinion over the last decade in favor of funding “entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare” at current levels, and a similar shift away from prioritizing “reducing the federal budget deficit.”
The poll completed last week found that 71% of registered voters prefer to continue funding those programs, while just 26% said it's more important instead to lower the deficit.
The same survey in 2013 found it to be a closer question, with 54% saying their priority was funding the entitlement programs and 40% saying their priority was reducing the deficit.
The Fox News poll found that key segments of the GOP base overwhelmingly prefer to continue funding those retirement programs and avoiding cuts. Self-identified Republicans sided with preserving those programs over prioritizing deficit reduction by a margin of 59%-38%, Donald Trump voters said so 59%-37%, rural voters said so 70%-26% and white voters without a college degree said so 73%-24%.
The new survey illustrates the dilemma facing the House Republican majority, which is highlighting a budget policy agenda centered around cutting federal spending and reducing deficits. It’s a similar agenda to the one they pursued a decade ago when the GOP base was relatively more affluent, college-educated, suburban and open to fiscal conservatism in the mold of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, the party’s national ticket in 2012.
The new Republican base, realigned by the rise of Trump, is registering little interest in those same ideas.
The Fox News poll was taken March 24-27 and includes 1,007 registered voters nationwide, picked from a voter file, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.