What They Told Us: Reviewing Last Week’s Key Polls - Week Ending November 19, 2016

Talk is cheap in politics, so now voters will begin to find out if Donald Trump can deliver on what he promised.

In a “60 Minutes” interview on CBS last Sunday night, the president-elect made it clear that Obamacare and filling the long-standing vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court are high on his list of action items, and voters think that’s a good place to start. Voters want to see the seat vacated by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia last February filled at last. 

In the same interview, Trump reiterated his support for building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border to stop illegal immigration and for deporting illegal immigrants convicted of serious crimes. Ninety-two percent (92%) of Trump supporters rank gaining control of the border as more important than legalizing the status of the illegal immigrants living in the United States.

Voters agree the government needs to do more to control the border but still aren’t sure that that alone is enough to make them support a path to citizenship for those already here illegally. 

During the campaign, Trump was strongly critical of so-called sanctuary cities that refuse to enforce immigration laws. Voters still support punitive action against sanctuary cities, but Democrats and unaffiliated voters are more protective of these cities than they have been in the past.

Voters ranked the economy and jobs as their number one voting issue.

Half of working Americans now expect a raise in the coming year, and they think the best place to get it is where they are employed now.

Most voters think Democrats should work with Trump once he’s in the White House, but Democrats strongly disagree. Voters like the way President Obama has responded to Trump’s election so far but don’t think the early public peace between the two men says much about the future.

Obama continues to earn some of the best job approval ratings of his entire presidency. 

Trump in the Sunday TV interview seemed to back away from his campaign vow to name a special prosecutor to investigate defeated Democratic rival Hillary Clinton for her handling of classified information while secretary of State. But 65% of Republicans think the incoming GOP administration should keep investigating Clinton and her closest aides.

The FBI reopened its investigation of her less than two weeks before Election Day following the discovery of thousands of previously unseen e-mails but closed it several days later, saying there were still no grounds for a Clinton indictment. Clinton now blames the FBI for costing her the election, but 60% of all voters agree with the FBI’s decision to go public about its reopening of the Clinton investigation. 

In a survey in October just before the FBI reopened the case, 53% said Clinton should have been indicted.

Following Clinton's surprise loss to Trump, most voters think it's time for her to quit the public arena, but her fellow Democrats think she should stick around. Still, Democratic voters now believe their party should move more in the direction of Clinton's primary opponent, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

Rasmussen Reports told you all along that it was a much closer race than most other pollsters predicted. We weren’t surprised Election Night. They were. Now Real Clear Politics has posted the final results, and we came in second out of 11 top pollsters who surveyed the four-way race.

Our final poll before Election Day was the closest among all pollsters who correctly picked Clinton to win the popular vote.

Most voters are confident in the outcome of last week's election, but few trust the media coverage that led up to it.

The outsider candidate may have won this year’s presidential election, but most voters still don't expect the government to be looking out what's best for them.

Sixty percent (60%) of voters still believe the nation is headed in the wrong direction, but that’s the lowest level of pessimism since February 2015.

Voters are closely divided over whether the street protests against Trump’s election are the product of genuine concern or just being staged by troublemakers. But most agree the protests won’t achieve anything good.

He wrote the Declaration of Independence and is one of the nation’s most illustrious Founding Fathers, but some professors at the University of Virginia, the school he founded, want the university’s president to stop quoting Thomas Jefferson – because Jefferson owned slaves. Thirty-nine percent (39%) of Americans believe there is less freedom of speech on U.S. college campuses today than there has been in the past.

Two-out-of-three Americans view political correctness as a threat and say they don't have freedom of speech anymore.

In other surveys last week:

-- It’s flu season again, and most Americans are getting flu shots again this year.

-- With Black Friday just a week away, are Americans gearing up to start their holiday shopping? We’ll tell you Monday morning how many have finished their shopping already.

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