Trump administration officials are preparing to challenge admissions policies they deem to be discriminatory against white students. Unsurprisingly, analysts and commentators have dredged up old poll numbers to try to figure out how it will play politically.

The polls don’t tell a clear story. Some polls show that affirmative action is very popular. Others show that it’s not popular at all. How pollsters pose the question is a critical factor.

Based on its limited success at the ballot box and my own read of which poll questions make the most sense, my best guess is that affirmative action is fairly unpopular. But I’m troubled by a wider problem: It’s not clear that even a well-worded question would give us much insight into the politics of the issue.

Over the last decade or so, polls have shown that the public backs the liberal or Democratic position on just about every major issue. By these measures, comprehensive immigration reform, environmental protection, gun background checks and many other issues ought to have been political winners for the Democrats. And yet Republicans now hold full control of government in Washington. There’s a loosely held but widespread assumption that many of these same issues have been a part of the Republican resurgence.