Fox News Poll: Views on (Trump's) proposed ban on non-U.S. Muslims

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Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump caused a stir last week when he called for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States until the government can “figure out what is going on.”

How do voters feel about Trump’s proposal?  Well, that depends.

A new Fox News poll finds 50 percent of voters favor Trump’s ban, while 46 percent are opposed.

However, when Trump’s name is removed from the question, support for the plan goes up five points and opposition goes down six: 55 percent favor the unnamed proposal, while 40 percent oppose it.

So while voters favor the “Trump” ban by a 4-point margin -- that increases to 15 points when the same ban is not associated with Trump.

CLICK TO READ THE POLL RESULTS

There are stunning shifts in the responses among Democrats: 45 percent favor banning Muslims if Trump’s name is not mentioned, yet when the plan is identified as Trump’s, support drops to 25 percent.

Among Republicans, views hold steady: 71 percent favor it when attributed to Trump vs. 72 percent for the generic proposal.

Trump’s proposal was in response to the mass shooting that killed 14 people and injured 21 others in San Bernardino, California.  The FBI says the attack was carried out by a Muslim couple who supported the Islamic State.  The wife had moved to the United States from Pakistan after passing multiple background checks by U.S. immigration officials.

Here is the wording of the “split sample” questions asked by the Fox News poll.  Half of respondents were asked Version 1 and the others Version 2.

Version 1:  Do you favor or oppose temporarily banning Muslims who are not U.S. citizens from entering the United States until government officials can say with confidence they can identify those who are coming here to cause the country harm?

Version 2:  Do you favor or oppose Donald Trump’s proposal to temporarily ban Muslims who are not U.S. citizens from entering the United States until government officials can say with confidence they can identify those who are coming here to cause the country harm?

The Fox News poll is based on landline and cellphone interviews with 1,013 randomly chosen registered voters nationwide and was conducted under the joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R) from December 16-17, 2015. The questions on banning Muslims were split sampled, which means each question was only asked of half the sample and those results have a sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.