WASHINGTON – With his victory, President-elect Donald Trump has reshaped American politics, forming a conservative, working-class coalition that includes a number of black and Latino voters that has the potential to hold a majority for years.

With a Republican-controlled Senate, probably the House as well, and a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Courthe now has the opportunity to significantly shift public policy to the right.

Or he might impulsively take it all to the ditch.

In his victory speech on Wednesday morning, Trump claimed that voters had given him a “strong mandate.”

They did, but for limited purposes.

What voters want from Trump

The campaign showed, and exit polls confirmed, that a broad swath of voters mainly want Trump to do two things — insure against another inflationary crisis and reduce the number of immigrants entering the US.

There is much less reason to believe that voters are eager to hand over broad government authority to Elon Musk or give it to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. control over federal health policy.

On other subjects, there is strong evidence of what might be called an anti-mandate. Even in conservative states, for example, voters have made it clear that they opposes movements to restrict abortion. There is very little support in the country for withdrawal LGBTQ+ rightsdespite the wishes of some of Trump’s evangelical supporters.

And there is little public support for Trump to retaliate against his Democratic opponents.

Will inflation risk rekindling?

Preventing another round of large-scale price increases should be easy: Inflation is already largely under control after the rapid increase in costs in 2022 and early 2023 and interest rates are falling. Doing nothing would get the job done.

The problem is that Trump doesn’t want to do anything. He wants to do more things, including imposing massive tariffs and promulgation new tax cuts for individuals and corporations — which presents a high inflationary risk.

Congress has given presidents a lot of power to levy tariffs – taxes on imports. But that would raise the cost of goods across the economy, a wide range of economists warned.

Big tax cuts would increase the federal deficit, ie is already running at record levels. And that is inflationary.

Immediately after the election, interest rates rose as bond investors began to price the possibility of renewed inflation under Trump.

The new administration may try to offset the tax cuts with spending cuts, particularly on health care and assistance to the poor and elderly. Many Democrats believe he will support a renewed Republican effort to make deep cuts to Medicaid and reducing health insurance subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, that make it possible to reach tens of millions of Americans.

But this time, Trump avoided committing to repealing the health care law, a crusade that ended in political disaster for him the last time.

Moreover, the history of the last half century has repeatedly shown that Republicans talk about spending cuts when they are not in power rather than enact them when they are in power. Instead, they default to more debt, which was the pattern of Trump’s first term.

How Far Will Trump Go: Immigration

Reducing the immigrant population could be even more difficult for the new administration.

During President Biden’s tenure, voters were undoubtedly emboldened by immigration. A majority wants now fewer immigrants entering the countrylegal or illegal and it is open to the idea of ​​mass deportations of persons residing in the US without legal authorization.

Trump’s core supporters are particularly vocal about the issue. About a third of them listed immigration as their most important issue, according to the report AP VoteCast poll of 115,000 voters.

Their anger does not stop at the border. Immigrants now make up about 14 percent of the U.S. population—near a record high. That helped the economy by preventing the type of labor shortages and population decline that affected countries such as Japan and South Korea. But it also brought social and cultural changes that troubled many Americans.

But majority sentiment can swing either way. When Trump cracked down on immigrants in his first term, many Americans thought he went too far. That generated a wave of pro-immigrant sympathy.

Trump has vowed to enact “the largest domestic deportation campaign in American history.” his advisor Stephen Miller, spoke of assembling a ‘huge force’ of National Guard troops and law enforcement in conservative states to hunt down millions of residents living in the country illegally, haul them off to detention camps and then deport them.

In August, a majority of voters — 56 percent overall and 88 percent of Trump supporters — said they strongly or somewhat affirmed favored “mass deportations of immigrants living in the country illegally,” according to a Pew Research Center survey.

That doesn’t mean, however, that they would support Miller’s dreams.

Voters’ views on immigration are often complicated. A separate question in the same Pew poll found that 61 percent of voters — though only a third of Trump supporters — said undocumented immigrants should be able to “stay in the country legally if certain requirements are met.”

Other polls have found that support for deportation falls when pollsters ask about certain categories of immigrants in the U.S. illegally, such as longtime residents, spouses of U.S. citizens and people brought to the U.S. illegally as children.

How far will Trump go: the rule of law

Efforts to prosecute Trump for federal crimes have ended. Any president has the authority to tell the Justice Department to drop a case, and Trump has said he will fire special counsel jack smith “within two seconds”.

Smith already does intends to cease his efforts and asked a judge to suspend all proceedings in the election interference case.

Trump cannot similarly dispose of the two criminal cases against him in state court – New York money and fraud case on which he was convicted in May and the Georgia case he was on indicted on charges of interfering with the 2020 election. Presidents have no authority over local prosecutors or state judges.

Those cases, however, don’t pose as much of a threat to Trump as federal prosecutions have.

trump card he has not yet been convicted in the New York case – sentencing is currently set for November 26 – but the judge could dismiss the case before Tuesday’s deadline or delay sentencing indefinitely, and any penalty other than a fine is considered unlikely.

Georgia’s case has faced one problem after another and may be fatally blocked.

Beyond closing the cases against him, Trump has hinted for nearly two years that he would pardon some or all of the men convicted of storming the Capitol on January 6, 2021, many of whom were convicted of attacking law enforcement officers.

Both of those steps would infuriate liberals — something Trump seems to relish — but Tuesday’s results strongly suggest most voters won’t care much.

They may feel differently, however, if Trump follows suit threats to use federal power to go after his political opponents. He has talked about appointing a special counsel to continue unspecified investigations into Biden, for example, and has at times revived eight-year-old threats to go after former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, his 2016 opponent.

One thing on which the vast majority of Americans consistently agree is a desire for less partisan confrontation.

How Far Trump Will Go: Abortion

Trump will be under a lot of pressure from the anti-abortion wing of the Republican Party to impose new restrictions. Is there a much could do without any new legislation from Congress, especially to limit medication abortions.

Throughout the campaign, he avoided answering questions about what, if any, restrictions he would approve. His public statements made it clear that he understood the political danger the issue poses to his party.

In the current election, voters approved abortion rights measures in two very conservative states, Montana and Missouri, as well as in the swing states of Arizona and Nevada, and three liberal states – Colorado, Maryland and New York. In Trump’s home state of Florida, an abortion rights measure won a clear 57 percent majority, though it fell short of the 60 percent needed to amend the state constitution.

Just under two-thirds of voters nationwide said abortion should be legal in all (25%) or most cases (38%), according to the APVoteCast poll. The exit poll conducted for major television networks had a very similar number.

A key to Trump’s victory is that he won 40 percent of voters who said the procedure should be legal in most cases, the AP poll found. The network exit poll pegged the share even higher – 49%.

All of which suggests that Democrats have failed to convince a large swath of voters that Trump has significantly threatened abortion rights.

That’s consistent with how voters viewed Trump overall: More than half said they thought his views were “too extreme.” But enough of those voters sided with him anyway to carry him to victory.

Whether he assuages ​​their doubts or deepens them will quickly determine whether he can turn this week’s victory into a lasting political triumph or a series of self-inflicted wounds.

What else should you read?

LA Times special: With progressive ballot measures on the verge of failure, California’s political identity is being called into question

Exit polls: Two exit polls provide preliminary data on this year’s voters. Behold survey conducted for major television networks and the APVoteCast survey.

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