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Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation-backed plan to implement sweeping far-right political change in the U.S., might be the Republican Party’s dream agenda — but it’s also one of the least popular documents ever written, according to a new poll.
An NBC News national survey of 1,000 registered voters released on Sunday showed that only 4% of respondents approved of Project 2025, and only 1% — roughly 10 people — expressed a “very positive” opinion. In contrast, 57% of those surveyed held a negative opinion of the plan, and 51% reported “very” negative feelings, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1%. (42% of those surveyed identified as Democrats, and 43% as Republicans, with the remainder classified as independents.)
All this antipathy might have something to do with the fact that Project 2025 would gut legal rights and government protections for millions across the U.S., especially LGBTQ+ people. The over 900-page policy blueprint — also dubbed the “Presidential Transition Project” — sets forth a radical agenda to begin on the first day of Donald Trump’s hypothetical second term as president, with action items that include effectively banning abortion nationwide, eliminating the Department of Education, and reversing workplace diversity programs in private industry. Many Project 2025 policies as described would target LGBTQ+ communities, particularly transgender people of all ages. The document specifically decries “gender ideology” as a supposed threat to children, advocates for the denial of gender-affirming care under employee health insurance plans, and declares trans identities to be equivalent to pornography, calling for both to be outlawed.
NBC’s poll is only the latest sign that far-right policies are unpopular with U.S. voters, affirming multiple such surveys conducted in the past few months. A poll by the progressive research firm Navigator Research in early August found that 47% of voters view Project 2025 negatively, and that only 28% of self-described MAGA Republicans viewed it favorably; another Navigator poll from July reported significant majorities opposed to most of Project 2025’s proposals, particularly those related to health care. A UMass Amherst-YouGov poll in August also indicated most voters were opposed to the Heritage document and its proposals.
Trump himself, possibly recognizing Project 2025’s dramatic unpopularity with voters, has claimed total ignorance of the plan, which is publicly led by Heritage executives Spencer Chretien and Troup Hemenway. (Project director Paul Dans stepped down from his Heritage position last month, following public denunciation from the Trump campaign, although organization president and allegedly self-professed dog killer Kevin Roberts remains gainfully employed.) But Trump’s own branded campaign platform, “Agenda47,” largely aligns with the ideas outlined in the Heritage document — not to mention the fact that both Chretien and Hemenway are former Trump administration appointees: Chretien as “Special Assistant to the President,” Hemenway as an advisor and associate director in the Presidential Personnel Office.
At this point, the name “Project 2025” alone seems cursed for Trump and his allies, as though some Heritage flunkie wished for media coverage on a monkey’s paw. Democrats have seized on the document as concrete political proof of Republicans’ plans, and celebrities are publicly speaking out against it, like Paramore’s Hayley Williams, who called Project 2025 “Donald Trump’s playbook for the controlling and punishing” of marginalized groups at a music festival in Las Vegas last week. National polls currently put Trump slightly behind Vice President Kamala Harris, but most swing state races are still in a dead heat, leaving the results unpredictable if the presidential election were to be held today.
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