The company that ran President-elect Donald Trump’s polling operation has released a new poll showing widespread support for judges and politicians to prioritize gun rights.
The poll, conducted by McLaughlin and Associates and sponsored by the Second Amendment Foundation, was released on Tuesday. It found 77 percent of voters agree it’s “important” that federal judge appointments make it “a priority to try their best to strictly follow the 2nd Amendment.” Another 76 percent said it’s “important” for national political leaders to “protect and defend the 2nd Amendment Rights.” Fewer than 20 percent of respondents said neither was important to them.
“Americans continue to cherish their Second Amendment Rights as the results of our recent national survey clearly show,” Jim McLaughlin, CEO of the polling firm, said in a statement.
Additionally, the poll found 63 precent expect Trump to prioritize protecting their gun rights and 59 percent believe Republicans will do a better job protecting those rights than Democrats.
While the pollster’s partisan affiliation could skew the results, the survey is one of only a handful to examine gun policy preferences in the wake of the election. If the numbers are close to accurate, it would indicate American voters feel strongly about gun rights and that may have contributed to Republicans beating Democrats in last month’s election. It also suggests voters expect Trump and his party to live up to the general gun promises they made during the election.
However, the poll doesn’t devle into any specific policies and Republicans stripped most detailed plans for what they’d do on guns from their 2024 platform. So, it’s unclear what exactly Republicans might do on guns in the next Trump Administration and the poll sheds little light on specific asks voters have for them.
Alan Gottlieb, head of the Second Amendment Foundation, argued the new poll is proof Democrats are out of touch with American voters.
“This survey underscores the prevailing public perception that Democrats have become the ‘party of gun prohibition’,” Gottlieb said in a statement.
McLaughlin and Associates has been a top pollster for Donald Trump since his first run for office nearly a decade ago. It has done internal polling for his campaigns, helping guide him to victory in two of them. But it is also among the lowest ranked polling firms, accorind to FiveThirtyEight. It garnered a .5 out of three stars and 1.1 out of 10 transparancy score from the poll aggregator.
Tuesday’s poll also featured a seven point gap from the RealClearPolitics average when it asked about the direction of the country.
Still, McLaughlin’s most recent election polling ended up very close to the mark. In early October, the Trump Campaign released internal swing state polling done in part by McLaughlin. Those polls ended up correctly predicting Trump would win every swing state and were even within one point of the final margin in five of seven states.
McLaughlin argued the results of the company’s latest poll are evidence of
“It is safe to say that Americans are clearly excited about the results of the November elections and the rights of gun owners remain very important to voters,” McLaughlin said.
Gottlieb said it will bolster gun-rights efforts in the new administration.
“The McLaughlin poll asked five pertinent questions about gun rights, and the results affirm what we’ve known all along,” he said. “Trump’s return to the White House in January, coupled with GOP control on Capitol Hill, bodes well for rights which the current administration has tried to trample for the past four years.”
The Second Amendment Foundation said the poll ran from December 11th through the 14th and had a margin of error of +/- three percentage points. McLaughlin surveyed 1,000 American voters by phone.
UPDATE 12-18-2024 2:42 PM EASTERN: This piece has been updated to include the poll’s methodology and margin of error.
