Republican presidents and presidential candidates have been calling for ending the Department of Education almost since its inception in 1980. But they haven’t actually been able to dismantle or eliminate it, because that requires sign-off (i.e., bipartisanship) from Congress.

So it would be easy to dismiss President Donald Trump’s looming executive order directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to take steps to close the department as a messaging exercise. It also seems quite possible, as Dan Balz wrote recently, that the end result will simply be shifting the department’s functions to other agencies — not actually accomplishing the long-held goal of taking the federal government out of the education business.

But this is also no average administration, even relative to Trump’s first. It has repeatedly taken steps to shutter government agencies in ways that run afoul of the law and seem to challenge Americans’ tolerance for massive change.

And should they actually press the issue with the Education Department, it could be one of their riskiest gambits — in a string of increasingly risky ones.

There isn’t a ton of great polling on this proposal in recent years. (That perhaps is a reflection of how frequently the idea is floated and how seldom it is actually pursued.) But virtually all of the polling there is suggests this is not what the American people want. Indeed, it appears to be among the more unpopular things Trump has pushed for.

An Ipsos poll last month found that Americans opposed “proposals to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education” about 2-to-1 — 63 percent to 32 percent.

Republicans supported the idea by 41 points (70-29), but independents opposed it by 40 points (68-28).

Eliminating the department was also 2-to-1 unpopular in a recent poll conducted for a nonprofit group. (This is an interest group poll, yes, but it’s also a bipartisan one conducted by well-respected Democratic and Republican pollsters.) And back in 2011, a CNN poll showed Americans opposed eliminating the department about 3-to-1, 74 percent to 24 percent.

As notable as the overall numbers is how those who are the most passionate — i.e., the most likely to care — feel.

The Ipsos poll showed about three times as many Americans strongly opposed dismantling the Education Department (45 percent) as strongly supported the idea (16 percent).

Those are pretty striking numbers that suggest this is far from something the American people want from the Trump administration. Which raises the question of how seriously the plan will truly be pursued.

But to the extent the administration actually goes there, it would be in keeping with how it has acted thus far. Many actions and proposals have polled remarkably poorly:

• 83 percent opposed Trump’s pardons of violent Jan. 6 defendants (Washington Post-Ipsos)
• Around 70 percent of Americans opposed the administration’s move to rename the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America” (Ipsos and Marquette University Law School)
• 70 percent opposed dismantling the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Ipsos)
• 62 percent in one poll and 74 percent in another opposed Trump’s plan to take control of Gaza (Quinnipiac University and Ipsos)
• 67 percent opposed freezing funds for public health agencies (Ipsos)
• As many as 65 percent opposed trying to take the Panama Canal (Marquette)
• 64 percent opposed his 25 percent tariffs on goods from Canada (Post-Ipsos)
• 60 percent in one poll and 64 percent in another opposed trying to make Canada the 51st state (Economist-YouGov and Reuters-Ipsos)
• 59 percent opposed his 25 percent tariffs on goods from Mexico (Post-Ipsos)
• 58 percent and 59 percent in two polls opposed dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development (Ipsos and Washington Post-Ipsos)
• 58 percent opposed laying off large numbers of government workers (Post-Ipsos)

This isn’t all of what Trump and his administration have done and proposed; it’s just the most unpopular stuff. Americans are more evenly divided on other signature proposals like ending diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, conducting mass deportations and imposing tariffs on China.

But it’s also clear that much of what Trump is doing is not what the American people are asking for. And he’s doing all of it despite a relatively modest mandate from the voters.

Perhaps those voters can ultimately be convinced that things like dismantling the Education Department are good ideas. But the totality of the evidence suggests an increasingly uninhibited Trump has little regard for what the broader public wants.