You can’t even say that Trump supporters in Wisconsin are united in their support for tariffs.

I don’t believe in making economic policy by opinion polling. Public opinion on economic policy is often impossible to reconcile with reality. For example, most voters say they want the budget deficit to be reduced, but they also say that taxes should not increase and that spending shouldn’t be cut except for foreign aid, so . . . that’s not going to work.

But politicians in Washington often say they are fighting for tariffs because voters in the heartland demand them, and those of us who live on the coasts simply don’t understand how out of touch we are. As someone who grew up in Wisconsin, this has always rubbed me the wrong way. Those politicians are, in many cases, just ventriloquizing heartland voters, putting words in their mouths that they never said for the benefit of special interests in Washington.

Tariffs are a prime example of this. The argument is simple: Trump won Wisconsin, Wisconsin is a manufacturing state, so Wisconsin must want tariffs because that’s what people in Washington, D.C., think that manufacturing states want.

Fortunately, there is a way to know what people in Wisconsin want: You can ask them. And the Marquette Law School Poll did. Their latest survey of registered voters in Wisconsin, conducted from February 19–26, found, “The public is skeptical of Trump’s tariffs, with 32 percent saying tariffs help the U.S. economy and 51 percent saying tariffs hurt the economy.”

A majority of voters in Wisconsin think tariffs hurt the economy. So don’t tell me you’re a populist speaking out for the forgotten man in Wisconsin by supporting tariffs.

You can’t even say that Trump supporters in Wisconsin are united in their support for tariffs. The poll said 92 percent of Republicans approve of Trump’s job as president, but only 61 percent of Republicans say that tariffs help the economy. That’s a very low reading among the president’s supporters for one of his top issues. Of those same Wisconsin Republicans, 74 percent support universal school choice, 81 percent approve of Elon Musk, 86 percent support ending DEI programs in schools, and 97 percent support requiring a photo ID to vote.

To be clear, I don’t take this poll to mean that voters support free trade. They weren’t asked that, and we know from other polling that results are mixed. All I’m saying is that the populist case for tariffs — that voters in the heartland are crying out for protectionism — doesn’t stand up when compared with a reliable poll of Wisconsin voters. They probably know better than politicians in Washington that the heartland stands to lose a lot from trade wars.