Given examples of six recent tweets by GOP President Donald Trump, a UtahPolicy.com poll finds that most Utahns find those tweets offense.
But the respondents don’t believe the Trump tweets were racist – they concerned two African-American leaders.
However, they also don’t believe that a president of the United States should be saying such things, the Utah Political Trends poll from Y2 Analytics finds.
In an attempt to measure how Utahns feel about six recent Trump tweets, the pollster asked how they felt about the tweets after the six were presented to them.
Three of the tweets by Trump were about U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Maryland, and his Baltimore district, and claimed Cummings shouldn’t be complaining about conditions of illegal aliens at the southern border because Baltimore is a worse place to live.
The second set of three tweets dealt with Cummings and Baltimore, and African-American religious/social justice leader Al Sharpton, and Trump’s relationship with him in the past, and Trump calling Sharpton a “con man” today.
Both sets of tweets generally break out the same.
For example, 56 percent of Utahns said the first three tweets were offensive, 40 percent said they were not offensive, and 4 percent didn’t know.
Concerning the second set of three tweets, 50 percent said they were offensive, 45 percent said they were not.
You find as you look through the poll’s demographics that women generally dislike Trump’s tweets much more than do men.
Younger Utahns, 18-34, really don’t like what Trump said in the six tweets, while those over 65 years old are much more accepting of what he is saying.
As you may expect, those who told Y2 that they are “strong Republicans” stand behind the president on these six specific tweets, political independents and Democrats dislike what the president is tweeting.
When Y2 asked if the six tweets were “racist,” because the two men Trump criticized are African-Americans, all groups except Democrats and younger Utahns, by a plurality or majority, said they were not.
But around 90 percent of Democrats said they were racist comments, while over 40 percent of younger Utahns agreed they were racist comments.
By large majorities, Utahns from various demographics said Trump’s six tweets should not be the kind of things a U.S. president should be saying.
Only “strong Republicans” said Trump’s tweets are OK by them, and appropriate for a president to say.
However, even “Not very strong Republicans” and “Independent leaning Republicans” don’t like what Trump was saying in those six tweets.
The short of it all:
In these specific tweets about two African-American leaders, Trump’s comments were out of bounds for most Utahns, with only “strong Republicans” and “strong conservatives” thinking they were OK.
And while offensive, most Utahns don’t believe the comments were racist.
The survey was conducted from July 31 to August 6, 2019, among 1,017 registered Utah voters, with a margin of error +/- 3.1%. You can read more about the methodology used in the poll here, and our online survey panel here.
