The Consensus Check
What Americans actually want
This platform is evidence-first, not poll-first: popularity does not make a policy work. But a platform that claims to serve people should check itself against what people actually say they want, and publish the comparison, including the places it differs. This page deliberately includes the platform's divisive and minority positions, not only the ones that poll well, because a page of only-popular planks would be marketing, not a check. Named surveys only.
Government and political leadership
What the public says: Salience first, support second, and the two are not the same: ranking government as the top national problem (Gallup, every month since late 2024; 29% in February 2026) says Americans think it is broken, not that they endorse any particular fix. 87% favor congressional term limits (Pew), and 86% favor banning stock trading by members of Congress, with Republicans and Democrats within one point of each other (UMD Program for Public Consultation).
What this platform does: The whole Government That Works pillar exists for this. Adopted outright: the congressional stock-trading ban, which is the anti-extraction principle applied to Congress itself. On term limits we tell the truth instead of chasing the poll: the political-science evidence is mixed, with studies finding term limits can shift power toward lobbyists and staff, so the platform carries the accountability reforms with stronger evidence first and says why.
Alignment: aligned · salience + policy support, separated below
Survey sources: Gallup, Most Important Problem (salience only) · Pew Research (2023): 87% favor congressional term limits · UMD Program for Public Consultation: 86% favor a congressional stock-trading ban
Immigration
What the public says: The clear second-ranked concern (20%, Gallup February 2026). The public wants both order and humanity: swing-state majorities prefer a path to citizenship plus a stronger border over mass deportation (Program for Public Consultation), and large majorities reject racial profiling and blanket asylum bans.
What this platform does: Build the Front Door is this consensus, made operational: funded courts, legal channels sized to reality, enforcement aimed at the wage floor. Where we differ from part of the public: the platform does not endorse a standing military presence at the border, because the evidence points at courts, channels, and employer enforcement as what actually produces order. That is a real difference and we state it rather than blur it.
Alignment: mostly aligned, one stated difference · salience + policy support
Survey sources: UMD Program for Public Consultation, six-swing-state immigration survey
Cost of living and economic security
What the public says: Economic concerns rank third (economy 11%, inflation 8%, Gallup February 2026), with healthcare costs the leading household worry. 85% say Social Security benefits should be maintained or increased even if taxes rise, across parties (NASI/AARP), and raising the payroll tax cap is among the most supported fixes. Durable majorities say ensuring health coverage is a federal responsibility.
What this platform does: The cap fix is already a scored row in the Ledger ($0.8-1.6 trillion) and a tracked ask on the scorecard. Universal coverage is the healthcare brief's standard, with the honest note that the public splits between single-payer and hybrid designs, which is exactly why the platform names a destination and a bridge instead of pretending the split away.
Alignment: aligned · salience + policy support
Survey sources: AARP/NASI: 85% say maintain or increase Social Security benefits even if taxes rise
Climate and energy
What the public says: Large majorities support expanding solar and wind, and a majority supports nuclear power; at the same time, most Americans oppose mandates that reach into daily life, like a hard phase-out of gas cars.
What this platform does: The climate brief is built as build-and-benefit, not mandate-and-sacrifice: deploy clean power, cut methane, price pollution with the revenue returned as dividends, and let cheaper clean energy win the driveway rather than banning the alternative. The science baseline is the IPCC and the UNEP gap reports, pinned on the Evidence page, including the honest overshoot numbers.
Alignment: aligned by design · policy support
Survey sources: EPIC/AP-NORC 2024 climate poll (support by policy design)
Artificial intelligence
What the public says: Public anxiety about AI and jobs is rising, and pluralities favor deliberate federal oversight of the technology over the fastest possible rollout.
What this platform does: The innovation brief's line is the position: AI should handle the paperwork, people should make the decisions. Public return on public investment, cost-causation pricing for giant compute loads, and gains shared with displaced workers. This project itself uses AI and discloses it on the About page: the test is never the tool, it is whether the tool serves people.
Alignment: aligned · directional; pinned survey link pending
Survey link pending verification; this row is carried as directional context, not a pinned consensus claim.
LGBTQ+ civil rights
What the public says: 72% of Americans support nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people, including a majority of Republicans (56%), independents (76%), and Democrats (90%); support has held above 70% for a decade (PRRI American Values Atlas, 2025). Marriage equality is backed by 65% and settled twice, in the courts and the bipartisan Respect for Marriage Act.
What this platform does: The justice brief states the civil-rights baseline without hedging and backs the Equality Act. Where clinical questions in transgender medicine are genuinely contested, the platform does not follow the poll in either direction: it follows the evidence, funds the long-term research, leaves care decisions with families and clinicians, and opposes categorical political bans. The baseline tracks the consensus; the contested clinical questions track the evidence.
Alignment: aligned on the baseline · policy support
Survey sources: PRRI 2025 American Values Atlas
Drugs and cannabis
What the public says: Support for legalizing marijuana was 68-70% in 2020-2024 and 64% in October 2025, with majorities in every age group (Gallup). Majorities also favor treating drug use as a health rather than a purely criminal matter.
What this platform does: The drug-policy plank is decriminalization plus diversion and treatment, and federal cannabis legalization via the MORE Act with expungement. The platform parts from pure enthusiasm on one point, and says so: it carries the long-term evidence on adolescent cannabis and cognitive harm against its own plank, and designs legalization around an adolescent-use tripwire. Agreement on the policy, honesty about the drug.
Alignment: aligned, with one stated caution · policy support
Survey sources: Gallup: record 70% support for legalizing marijuana (2023 series)
Abortion access
What the public says: 60-64% of Americans say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, a majority that has held and modestly grown since Dobbs (Pew, January 2026; AP-NORC).
What this platform does: The healthcare brief codifies the Roe-era floor federally (Women’s Health Protection Act) and protects contraception. This is one of the clearer alignments with majority opinion, and the platform states it plainly rather than hedging.
Alignment: aligned · policy support
Survey sources: Pew Research (March 2026): abortion legal in all/most cases
Medicare for All
What the public says: Around 58-63% support Medicare for All, and support largely holds when respondents are told it would raise taxes and replace most private plans (Data for Progress, 2025). But single-payer polling is sensitive to wording, and "eliminate private insurance" framings pull it lower.
What this platform does: The platform names Medicare for All as the clearest path but does not pretend the financing politics away: it leads with a Swiss-style universal bridge that reaches coverage now on existing structures. That is a deliberate hedge against exactly the wording-sensitivity the polling shows.
Alignment: majority support, treated as contested · policy support, wording-sensitive
Survey sources: Data for Progress (Nov 2025): M4A support with counterarguments briefed
Student debt cancellation
What the public says: Genuinely divided. About half of Americans back canceling at least some student debt, but 57% of Republicans oppose any cancellation; support jumps (a bipartisan majority, ~54% of Republicans included) when relief is targeted to lower-income or defrauded borrowers (AP-NORC; YouGov, 2024).
What this platform does: This is a place the platform is ahead of settled opinion, and says so. It frames forgiveness as transition policy paired with debt-free public college, and the evidence page carries the regressivity objection head-on. Broad cancellation is more contested than the targeted version; the platform argues the broad case on the merits rather than claiming a consensus that is not there.
Alignment: divided; platform is ahead of opinion · policy support (divided)
Survey sources: AP-NORC: views on student loan relief by party and debt experience
Carbon pricing
What the public says: Depends heavily on design. A carbon fee paid by corporations draws majority support (~75% of Democrats, half of independents, 40% of Republicans), but a direct per-household energy fee is unpopular, with a majority unwilling to pay much out of pocket (EPIC/UChicago; Michigan CLOSUP).
What this platform does: The platform’s fee-and-dividend design is the more popular version, the fee lands on pollution and the revenue returns to households, but the honest read is that any pollution price is politically contested, and the brief carries it as a plank to argue for, not a settled winner.
Alignment: design-dependent; the dividend version is the popular one · policy support, design-dependent
Survey sources: EPIC/AP-NORC 2024: carbon-fee support by who pays
National service
What the public says: Mixed among the general public (around half support a mandatory program, Gallup) but strong among the young, roughly 75% of 18-24-year-olds support the idea of national service (Gallup; Voices for National Service).
What this platform does: The service brief is built around exactly this split: it makes participation voluntary and well-paid first, and only contemplates a requirement once a real, funded place exists for everyone, with conscience and disability accommodation. It does not lead with a mandate the general public has not signed onto.
Alignment: mixed public, strong among the young; sequenced accordingly · policy support (mixed)
Survey sources: Gallup: about half of Americans favor mandatory national service
Where the platform runs ahead of, or against, majority opinion
What the public says: Some planks here are minority or divided positions and the page will not hide them: D.C. statehood polls in the minority-to-split range in most surveys; permit-to-purchase firearm licensing polls well in the abstract (~70%) but sits against the direction states like Georgia have moved; federal conditions on local zoning read as overreach to many; and a direct household carbon fee is unpopular even where corporate pricing is not.
What this platform does: On these, the platform leads with evidence rather than polls, and states the tension instead of burying it. Popularity is not the test, workability and evidence are, and where the platform is ahead of public opinion it makes the argument openly and lets the Hard Questions page take the hits. The point of this row is that the page above is not a list of only-popular positions.
Alignment: stated differences, not hidden · minority/divided positions, stated
Survey sources: Morning Consult: D.C. statehood polling
The rule this page follows: where the evidence and the consensus agree, the platform says so plainly, because those are the wins available now. Where an idea polls at 80 percent but the research is mixed, term limits being the clearest case, the platform says that too, because chasing polls is how you end up defending something you cannot deliver. And where the platform differs from a majority, the difference is stated, sourced, and open to challenge on the Hard Questions page, and the last row above collects the planks where this platform runs ahead of or against majority opinion rather than tucking them away. Poll figures here come from Gallup, Pew Research, AP-NORC, the University of Chicago's EPIC, Data for Progress, PRRI, the University of Maryland's Program for Public Consultation, and NASI/AARP; each is named on the row it supports.