Battleground poll shows tax cuts bill’s political challenges

The Scoop

As President Donald Trump’s megabill nears passage in the Senate, incumbent Republicans like Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., will quickly have to pivot to selling it to their voters.

That’s going to be a challenge, at least according to a new North Carolina poll obtained by Semafor and conducted by the left-leaning Data for Progress in June. The survey shows that a majority of North Carolinians start off opposed to the House-passed bill; once some of the bill’s key provisions are described to them the split becomes 38% supportive, 57% opposed.

In a brief interview about the bill’s politics this week, Tillis said it’s tough to poll a bill that is still under construction. “At the end of the day, I think we will have a bill that we will be able to sell to people in North Carolina,” he insisted.

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Tillis has sounded generally supportive of the bill in recent days and a vast majority of Republican voters in his state support the legislation, according to the Data for Progress survey of 916 likely voters in North Carolina in early June commissioned by Families Over Billionaires. But independents don’t like it so far, and even Republicans surveyed narrowly see the bill’s tax policies as not beneficial to their family.

Still, some of the bill’s provisions are wildly popular, particularly increasing the child tax credit and removing taxes on tips and overtime pay — a big Trump priority. On the other hand, cuts to Medicaid, the bill’s deficit impacts, and extending tax cuts for high earners are not popular, according to the survey.

Republicans are working to shore up some of the bill’s potential effects on rural hospitals before presenting finalized text as soon as next week. Tillis said he believes in the end the bill will be a “net plus and I’ll stand by it.”

“The Democrats are going to poll when they think the numbers are going to be in their favor. We do the same thing. So, don’t begrudge them for doing that. But at the end of the day, they’re polling on interim inputs. We got a lot of work to do to get the bill right,” he said.