Donald Trump is more popular than the public opinion polls suggest

President Donald Trump's first 100 days of office have been some of the most chaotic and destructive in American history. Given this fact, the “conventional wisdom” suggests that Trump’s presidency should be in grave trouble at this early point in his second term. But the following caveat must always apply when assessing Donald Trump and his political fortunes: He has repeatedly broken the limitations, expectations, and force of the “conventional wisdom.” Trump would not have otherwise been elected twice.

Nonetheless, the public opinion polls would appear to suggest that the conventional wisdom about Donald Trump’s declining popularity is, at this early point in his reign, correct. On broad assessments of the economy, Trump is continuing to lose support. For example, a new poll from Gallup shows that the American people feel that the economy is heading in the wrong direction and are less hopeful about the future. The new Gallup poll contains these specific findings:

• A majority of Americans are finding it harder to get a job.
• A majority of Americans assess their personal financial situation as now more difficult.
• 75 percent of Americans report that the economy is doing poorly.
• Almost 60 percent of Americans believe that the country is already or soon will be in a recession.

At the Washington Post, Phillip Bump describes Trump’s rapidly falling poll numbers about the economy — as well as for his handling of immigration, which was once his strongest issue — in the following way: “There’s a difference between seeing your elevation descend because you’re in an airplane and watching it go down because you’re in free fall. It may prove challenging for some of the above trends to be reversed.”

Beyond the economy, a new Pew Research Center survey finds that only 40 percent of Americans approve of Trump's overall performance as president. The Pew survey also shows that 55 percent of Americans disapprove of his deep cuts to the federal government. On governance, 51 percent of Americans believe that Trump is abusing his authority via executive orders.

A new, wide-ranging and comprehensive poll from the New York Times and Sienna College reveals more growing discontent from the American people. At the Times, Shane Goldmacher, Ruth Igielnik and Camille Baker explain:

The turbulent early months of Mr. Trump’s administration are seen as “chaotic” and “scary” by majorities of voters — even many who approve of the job he is doing. Voters do not view him as understanding the problems in their daily lives and have soured on his leadership as he approaches his 100th day in office....

Voters do not seem to believe Mr. Trump empathizes with their struggles. After spending much of last year promising to immediately lower prices, he and his allies have urged patience and tried to brace the country for short-term economic pain.

Only 44 percent of voters — including a meager 31 percent of independents — said that he “understands the problems facing people like you. Broad majorities said they would prefer to place limits on exactly the kinds of powers that Mr. Trump has tried to exercise....

One of the most troubling numbers for Mr. Trump is the share of voters who feel they have been harmed by his policies.

Voters are more than twice as likely to say his policies have hurt them as they are to say his policies have helped them. That is a reversal from last fall, when many voters across demographic groups said his policies during his first term had helped them.

Donald Trump has been in office for almost 100 days. His approval rating is now the lowest of any president in 80 years.

This is the warm hug with soothing words whispered in the ear that "everything will somehow be OK" that the Democrats, the so-called Resistance and other Americans who believe in real We the People democracy and the Constitution are hungry for. The big picture is a more complex and realistic story that is very discomforting, if not existentially perilous and dread-filled.

Public opinion polls are a response to a series of questions. Public opinion polls are also a snapshot in time that do not predict the future. By comparison, focus groups and other qualitative approaches offer much more insight into how people think about politics. To truly make sense of the Age of Trump, it is that "how?" and "why?" — and certainly not the shortsighted obsession with public opinion polls that is typical among the mainstream news media and political class — that are potentially most instructive and illuminating.

The New York Times has been convening a series of focus groups comprised of “cross-sections of Americans whose voices are often not heard in opinion journalism.” The Times’ April 14 entry in the series, “How 13 Independent Voters Who Backed Trump Think He Is Doing So Far,” should provide some comfort for Donald Trump and his MAGA Republicans:

“There’s a lot of social media saying: Hey, are you Republicans or MAGA people regretting your vote? And no, I’m not,” one participant told us in Opinion’s latest conversation with voters in our America in Focus series….

His vow that short-term pain would mean long-term gain resonated with a number of these voters, who envisioned better jobs and a more even playing field on the other side of the tariffs. As one participant said, “I had my eyes open when I voted for Trump that it was going to hurt.” But what does short-term pain look like? That’s the question everyone, including the participants in this group, is trying to answer.

When asked by the moderator, “Does anybody say: If I had to go back, I would have voted differently?” Two members of the focus group, a Latina who works in finance and a white man who is retired, offered these pointed responses:

“There’s nothing that would have made me vote for Kamala Harris.”

“No.”

The BBC and The Wall Street Journal recently spoke to Trump supporters about his new tariff regime and other economic policies:

On a quick drive around the small Ohio town of Delta, you can spot nearly as many Trump flags as American stars-and-stripes banners.

And at the petrol station near the Ohio Turnpike, the pumps bear relics of the last administration, with slogans slamming Trump's predecessor: "Whoever voted for Biden owes me gas money!"

This is Trump country - the Republican ticket easily won here in November's presidential election by a margin of almost two-to-one. And while the markets are in turmoil following Trump's unveiling of expansive global tariffs this week, plenty of people in Delta and hundreds of Midwestern towns like it still back the president's plans.

Those plans, to impose tariffs of between 10% and 50% on almost every country, have upended global trade and led to warnings that prices could soon rise for American consumers. Trump, meanwhile, has said the move will address unfair trade imbalances, boost US industry and raise revenue.

For some in Delta, the president's argument about fairness resonates….

A Trump voter in Delta told the BBC that "Sometimes you have to walk through fire to get to the other side." The BBC story concludes by highlighting the desperation that drove the Trumpists in that community to make a Faustian bargain with their “savior”:

And as they recounted Delta's history, they described a gradual erosion in quality of life that they believe has made many people willing to roll the dice even when economists say Trump's tariff plan comes with stark risks.

"It was a good little town to grow up in…. It seems like the heart of America is gone… [It] is the kind of place where 25% or 30% of the people are struggling with their demons".

And while these issues have little to do with tariffs, the challenges faced by people in towns like Delta may go some way to explaining why many are willing to give President Trump the benefit of the doubt, even as markets plunge on faraway Wall Street.

In a second story from the BBC about Trump’s tariff regime, his supporters shared similar rationalizations and motivations, like this from A 71-year-old woman from Michigan who supports Trump:

I know we're all going to get pinched in the pocket for a while. I think in the long run, it's going to get us out of the massive deficit that we're in.

I am concerned about the price of goods going up. I am going to end up being more particular about what I buy, basically I'll tighten the belt for a while.

But then I think it's going to go full circle and it's going to be a good thing for the economy and for people in general.

We've been the world's financial doormat for a while and we've gotta stop it.

A 38-year-old trucker from Ohio told the BBC that:

I feel like the way to kick-start investment back into US manufacturing is exactly this.

It's a necessary evil.

Up until the 70s, there were two steel mills [in my area] and then they closed. And up until the last 10 years, the sites have been abandoned

We might not get back everything, but even if we recover 30-40% of it, it's quite a bit of money and jobs.

The April 10 Wall Street Journal story “Trust Unshaken: Trump Voters Are Sticking With Their Guy” contains more good news for Donald Trump. His followers remain loyal, trustful, and hopeful:

“I always tell people: I don’t have to worry about anything because he’s got it…. There’s a method to his madness, and so I do trust it.”

“Everything Trump does they say is going to be nuclear, and it’s not….Right now is not good for middle-class or just-starting-out people. Things are not good. So somebody has to come in and break things apart a little.”

“The train’s running pretty fast. It’d be ugly to jump off now.”

“He’s the only president who has the balls to do it, whether it pees in your Cheerios or not. I absolutely trust him.”

Beyond these focus groups and other conversations with Donald Trump supporters, there is polling data that greatly challenges the conventional wisdom about Trump's doomed political fortunes. The following should be alarm sirens for anyone desperate for some hope that Trump's “shock and awe” campaign and political power are getting weaker. A new poll from NBC shows that a growing number of registered voters now identify with Donald Trump’s MAGA movement. NBC details how:

As President Donald Trump nears the 100-day mark of his second term, recent polling from NBC News shows how he has consolidated the Republican Party not just around himself, but also around his broader “Make America Great Again” movement.

Thirty-six percent of registered voters identified themselves as MAGA supporters in the March NBC News poll. It’s a significant increase from past NBC News polling — up from 23% of respondents in a merged sample of all of NBC News’ polling across 2023 and 27% of respondents in a merged sample of NBC News’ 2024 polling.

The overall share is powered by the 71% of Republicans who now call themselves MAGA supporters.

A recent analysis of the 2024 election by Democratic pollster David Shor should give the Democratic Party even more reason for extreme worry, doubt and fear about their ability to defeat the MAGA movement. At The New York Times, Shor explained to Ezra Klein how people who voted for the Democrats in 2022 but did not vote in 2024 are more likely to support Donald Trump and the Republicans. These findings are counter to the self-comforting narrative that the Democratic Party’s leadership and mainstream liberals and progressives (and the news media and pundit class) have been telling themselves that 2024 was a voter turnout election, and if they could have gotten politically demobilized and disengaged Americans to show up then Kamala Harris would have easily won:

The story of this election is that people who follow the news closely, get their information from traditional media and see politics as an important part of their identity became more Democratic in absolute terms. Meanwhile, those who don’t follow politics closely became much more Republican….

This problem didn’t exist four years ago. It’s not just that the New York Times readers are more liberal than the overall population — that’s definitely true. It’s that they’re more liberal than they were four years ago — even though the country went the other way. And so there’s this great political divergence between people who consume all the news sources that we know about and read about versus the people who don’t.

As a result of these changes, we’re seeing the reversal of a decades-long truism in American politics. For a long time, Democrats have said, and it’s been true, that if everyone votes, we win and that higher turnout is good for Democrats. But this is the first cycle where that definitively became the opposite.

I have some numbers here: If only people who had voted in 2022 had voted, Harris would have won the popular vote and also the Electoral College fairly easily. But if everyone had voted, Trump would have won the popular vote by nearly five points. And generally what you see now is that every measure of socioeconomic status and political engagement is just monotonically related to your chance of liking Trump….

Shor summarizes this painful reality for the Democrats: “It’s basically that the lower your political engagement, education level or socioeconomic status, the less engaged you are in politics, the more Trumpy you are. And that just wasn’t true four years ago.”

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A series of national polls show that the approval rating of the Democratic Party has plummeted to historic lows since the 2024 election.

The following new poll from Quinnipiac University should also shock the Democratic Party out of its complacency and stale leadership, branding and messaging. Republicans and Democrats are now tied at 33 percent on the question, “Which party cares more for the needs of people like you?” This is a reversal of a decades-long pattern in American politics where the Democrats — and not the Republicans — have consistently been seen as the party of working people and the average American.

CNN’s Harry Enten provides this context:

This, to me, is one of the most shocking pieces of poll data that I truthfully have seen this year or maybe in any prior year…. We got to tie even after this tariff war had already started, split between Democrats and Republicans on how people feel. Which party cares more for needs of people like you, and why is that so surprising? Because I want you to take a look at prior years. Democrats always lead on this question. Back in 2017, before the 2018 midterms, 13-point lead. [In] 2005 a 23-point lead for Democrats. [In] 1994, which was a big Republican year, a 19-point lead for Democrats, and now all of a sudden, a tie, all of a sudden the Democrats, who are the party of the people? No more, no more….

The gains have been concentrated at least within the last decade among voters without a college degree, the working class – that is where Republicans have gained even since the beginning of the Donald Trump administration. The Democratic base is now those with a college degree. Among the working class, those without a college degree, Republicans have overwhelmingly gained on this all-important question of which party cares more for people like yourself.

CNBC’s poll also has more bad news for the Democratic Party: Trump’s weakness on the economy has not translated into political dividends for the Democrats. “Asked about congressional preference, 48% of the public support Democratic control and 46% support Republican control, barely changed from CNBC’s March 2022 survey.”

ABC News has ice-cold water in the face of premature jubilation at Trump's historically low public opinion polls:

The silver lining for Trump is that the opposition party remains out of favor.

People said they trust him over the Democrats in Congress to handle the nation's main problems by 37%-30%. Underscoring bipartisan disaffection, 30% said they don't trust either party.

Further, while 60% said Trump is out of touch with the concerns of most people in the country, even more, 69%, said the Democratic Party is out of touch. It's 64% for the Republican Party overall.

Here is a devastating reality check for the Democratic Party in the Age of Trump: What if the real story of this era and the country's democracy crisis is not so much that the American people fell in love with Donald Trump and the MAGA movement but that they dislike the Democrats even more than him?

The Democrats need to engage in some real introspection, look in the metaphorical mirror and then ask themselves the hard question, "Why don't they love me anymore?" The Democrats must confront these ugly truths and uncomfortable realities if they are to have any real chance of defeating Donald Trump and his MAGA Republicans in the midterms, taking back the presidency, and by doing so saving the country's democracy. And of course, this scenario makes the huge assumption that America will still have reasonably "free and fair" elections in 2026 and then 2028.