Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
As Donald Trump’s administration settles into a global trade war — at least momentarily obscuring its war on the federal government and on the limitation of executive power, which continues on many fronts — it’s a good time for a reality check on the political capital he carries into the next turbulent phase of his second presidency.
For starters, all the triumphalist talk from MAGA-land of a huge popular mandate for governing and a new dominant Republican majority in the country really ought to stop. Following a brief (and entirely normal) post-election “honeymoon” of mild public approval (most of it probably based on relief over the end of the nightmarish 2024 campaign), Trump’s job approval ratings have very steadily (if slowly) declined since Inauguration Day. Looking at the Silver Bulletin polling averages (the most reliable available after ABC shut down FiveThirtyEight), which use a very inclusive survey database with results weighted for recency and demonstrated quality, the president’s job approval ratio was at 51.6 percent positive and 40 percent negative on January 20, producing a net positive rating of 11.6 percent. As of April 9, the ratio is now 46.1 percent positive and 50.4 percent negative, a net rating of minus-4.3 percent. Altogether, that means Trump’s net approval rating has dropped by 15.9 percent during the opening phase of his second term.
Looking at these numbers from a historical perspective, the most obvious take is that after a brief postelection blip, Trump is settling back into the state of relative unpopularity that has characterized most of his political career. With the exception of his earliest assessments before his shocking 2016 presidential-nomination win, and the brief if violent period of election denial at the very end of his first term, Trump has bumped along in the 40s on both job approval and personal favorability with net negative ratings. It’s about what you would expect of a politician with little appeal beyond his party base. It was just enough to get him elected in 2016 and close to reelection in 2020, despite sizable popular-vote deficits, and obviously enough to get him back into the White House in 2024 with a small popular-vote plurality. But the idea that Trump has fundamentally expanded his base of support is looking less likely every day.
Underlying his slow slide in job approval since reentering the White House have been indications that Trump is losing ground with some of the voter groups where he made crucial gains last November. A late-March CBS poll that provided reasonably good overall numbers for Trump (50 percent approval, 50 percent disapproval) showed 58 percent of Latino voters disapproving of his job performance with 42 percent disapproving strongly. Similar Economist-YouGov polling showed Trump’s net favorability rating among Latinos deteriorating from minus-11 percent in late January to minus-29 percent in early April with 54 percent registering “very” unfavorable opinions of Trump. Even more strikingly, the same polls showed Trump’s net favorability among under-30 Americans sliding from 5 percent on Inauguration Day to minus-29 percent now.
It’s very likely that these losses were concentrated among 2024 Trump voters who expected him to greatly improve the economy. Polls show his specific job-approval ratings for managing the economy have not been looking very good since his return to office. An April 1 Economist-YouGov survey showed a 45 percent to 48 percent approval ratio on Trump’s handling of “jobs and the economy,” which slipped to 40 percent to 53 percent on “inflation/prices.” A March 11 NBC News poll gave Trump a 44 percent approval to 54 percent disapproval job-performance rating on “the economy” and a 42 percent approval to 55 percent disapproval rating on “inflation and the cost of living.”
And another April poll, from Navigator Research, gave Trump his worst net job-approval rating on the economy (minus-13 percent) since they began tracking that in 2018.
Perhaps most impressively, a March 31 CBS News survey showed 64 percent of Americans thought Trump’s focus on lowering prices was “not enough.”
One specific negative influence on Trump’s public standing is the enormous attention Elon Musk has received for his destructive attacks on federal employees and selected programs and services. An April 2 Reuters-Ipsos survey assessed Musk’s job performance at 39 percent favorable and 57 percent unfavorable (with 43 percent very unfavorable). A March 27 Marquette Law School national poll showed Musk at 38 percent favorable and 60 percent unfavorable (with 46 percent very unfavorable). And most tellingly, a Blueprint poll of Wisconsin the day of a state supreme court election in which Musk was extremely involved and visible in a losing cause showed 48 percent of voters “strongly disapproved” of Musk’s activities at DOGE.
But the most immediate problem for Trump going forward may be negative reaction to his “Liberation Day” tariff program, along with the market chaos it is currently causing and the longer-term impact it may have on consumer prices and economic growth. The initial signs are not good, as Silver Bulletin reported earlier this week:
We’ve had three entirely post-Liberation Day polls. None of them are good for Donald Trump. In today’s new Navigator Research poll, 44 percent of registered voters approve of Trump and 53 percent disapprove. And the latest Morning Consult poll showed Trump with a net approval of -6. Even Rasmussen’s daily tracking poll — where Trump has gotten some of the most positive approval numbers of his second term — has him 4 points underwater.
A fourth post–Liberation Day poll today, the above-mentioned Economist-YouGov survey, also showed a five-point deterioration in Trump’s net approval rating in the last week. Everywhere survey questions are asked about Trump’s tariff policies, they rank among his least popular agenda items. Now that some tariffs (i.e., against China) have been raised again while others have been “paused,” it’s unclear what’s next and how it will affect Trump’s public standing. There’s not much evident optimism, though: The latest Reuters-Ipsos polls shows that 73 percent of Americans expect Trump’s tariff policies to boost consumer prices. If that actually happens, we could see Trump’s slow slide in popularity turn into something more like a crash.
