The more voters know about Project 2025, the more they hate it

The “Streisand effect” of Donald Trump trying to disavow Project 2025 continues. On Thursday, CNN took his I-dunno-nothin’-about-it claim and found at least 140 Trump administration people who helped write the autocratic agenda, including six former Cabinet secretaries and “more than half of the people listed as authors, editors and contributors to ‘Mandate for Leadership,’ the project’s extensive manifesto for overhauling the executive branch,” CNN reports. With all this attention on the dangerous, radical plan, more and more people are trying to find out what it’s all about. Navigator Research, a consortium of progressive polling firms, has the goods on how we should talk about it with friends and family, and what Democrats need to be saying about it on the stump as the election heats up. On Wednesday, Navigator released the third and final results from its latest survey about Project 2025. Conducted June 20-24, the survey found that the most salient and message about Project 2025 is that it “is an unprecedented, extreme Republican plan that will fundamentally alter the American government making Trump even more dangerous in a second term by granting him presidential powers like no president before him has ever had.”  According to Navigator, the most effective messages focused on the impact rather than on political consequences. The message that worked best for Democrats and independents was that Project 2025 would "roll back and eliminate Americans’ constitutionally protected rights and freedoms," while the message that worked best for non-MAGA Republicans—i.e., Republican voters who did not self-identify as supporting the MAGA movement—was that it would "hurt hard-working American families and seniors." “Nearly 9 in 10 Democrats (87%), 7 in 10 independents (70%), and about half of non-MAGA Republicans (48%) believed it would have a negative impact on them and their families after exposure to Project 2025’s policies and messaging,” Navigator found.  There’s plenty in the authoritarian plan to worry Americans. It seeks to end no-fault divorce and  restrict access to birth control—even condoms! It demands cuts to Social Security—raising the retirement age from 67 to 70—and wants to privatize Medicare. Then there are the proposals to curtail food assistance, eliminate Head Start, restrict help to disabled veterans, and roll back overtime pay requirements for hourly workers. Voters of all stripes know Trump, so all his efforts to distance himself from these policies won’t work. The majority of people surveyed by Navigator also believe that Project 2025 describes policy positions of the Republican Party and Donald Trump, and that Republicans would implement it if they win full control of the government in 2024. The big takeaway from Navigator’s three surveys on this is that the more people find out about it, the more unpopular it is. Navigator writes, “Project 2025 is underwater by 48 points at the end of this survey … with nearly 3 in 4 independents opposed to it … and Republicans split on the plan … [and ] more than 9 in 10 Democrats are opposed to Project 2025 by the end of the survey.” That makes our—and the Democratic Party’s—job in talking about Project 2025 easier. With left-leaners, you should talk about how much more dangerous Trump and Republicans will be in a second term. With independents and right-leaners, focus on the negative impact the agenda will have on them and their families. RELATED STORIES: Trump’s denial generates a surge of reporting on diabolical Project 2025 Meet the group behind Trump's fascist 2025 agenda Here's Team Trump's terrifying plan to dismantle the government Campaign Action