Most voters want a Congress that checks Trump's power, WSJ poll finds

Majority also prefers candidates who will vote to end the war with Iran

A majority of voters say they want a candidate for Congress who will put guardrails on President Trump’s powers, according to a new Wall Street Journal poll.

“Voters are sending a message that, no matter who wins the midterm elections, they hope the outcome produces some checks and balances on President Trump’s powers,” wrote Aaron Zitner, the Journal reporter who authored the article presenting the results. The newspaper described that as one of the main findings of the poll.

The poll also found that a majority of voters prefer a candidate who will vote to end the war with Iran.

The desire for a check on the president crosses party lines, according to the poll: even many Republicans say they will back GOP candidates for Congress but still prefer a candidate who would provide a check on the president.

The Journal conducted the poll recently, as early voting was under way in many states, according to the article. The survey is the newspaper’s own polling.

Zitner is a reporter and editor in the Journal’s Washington bureau. His reporting focuses largely on how politics are driven by demographic and economic change, and he also reports on trends in polling for the newspaper.

Earlier, Zitner was the Journal’s national politics editor. Previously, he was deputy chief of the Washington bureau for the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and other Tribune newspapers, where he helped lead presidential campaign coverage for the Los Angeles Times and served as the paper’s White House and Washington economics editor.

His reporting has also included a stint covering the emerging sciences of biotechnology, stem-cell research and the field of human fertility for the Los Angeles Times, and he has been a staff reporter for the Boston Globe and the Concord (N.H.) Monitor. Raised in Pittsburgh, Zitner is a graduate of Oberlin College.