A number of posts have explained that there's not much there there when it comes to public opinion on most issues. Patrick J. Egan writes at
The Washington Post:
But the TPP is a controversy on which Obama may be unusually free to ignore the demands of his core supporters. That’s because these days most Democrats — and, as it turns out, most Americans — have remarkably vague views on the question of free trade. This is shown by a cleverly worded question on the American National Election Study survey conducted just after the 2012 presidential election. Respondents were presented with the standard arguments for and against limiting foreign imports to the United States: “Some people have suggested placing new limits on foreign imports in order to protect American jobs. Others say that such limits would raise consumer prices and hurt American exports.” They were then asked if they favored or opposed limits on imports, and the question was appended with an option that we probably see too infrequently in political surveys: “…or haven’t you thought much about this?”
Americans venturing an opinion were staunchly anti-free trade, with those favoring import limits outnumbering those opposed by about 2 to 1. But adding “haven’t thought much” as a possible response had huge implications for expressed public opinion: it was the most preferred option overall (at 47 percent), and the plurality choice among every partisan group except strong Republicans. The lack of conviction is all the more noteworthy given that Americans were asked this survey question just after a presidential campaign centering on jobs and the economy that was fought in manufacturing-heavy battleground states like Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin.
So what do Americans think about free trade? The best answer to this question is probably “not much.” As he pursues fast-track authority for the TPP, expect to hear that President Obama is ignoring the opinion of his liberal base. But the truth is that on this issue, there’s simply not much opinion to ignore.
