Why is Trump struggling in the polls?

The Hill

3 days ago

President Trump is struggling with his approval rating even as he has largely followed through on much of what he called for on the campaign trail.
Through legislation in Congress and executive action, Trump has been able to mold the federal government to fit his vision, laying off thousands of federal workers with help from the Supreme Court, instituting widespread tariffs that have led to trade deals with various countries and getting his first major legislative achievement passed with the 'big, beautiful bill.'
All of these were proposals Trump made on the campaign trail as he became the first Republican to win the national popular vote in 20 years. But Trump has regularly been underwater in approval rating polls, raising questions about whether much of the country is pleased with his job performance and what he's delivered.
Experts pointed to multiple reasons for Trump's struggles, including the complexities of governing compared to campaigning for votes.
'A lot of those things … he said he would get done on Day 1, and that's not happened,' said Jonathan Hanson, a professor of political science at the University of Michigan.
Hanson noted unfulfilled promises by Trump to lower prices and to end conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East.
He also said Trump is sometimes not winning when he is getting things done.
'On top of that, where he's had momentum and success in terms of implementing things, generally those policies haven't been very popular,' Hanson said.
An underwater approval rating has been a rule for Trump, rather than an exception, throughout his political career.
He's the only president to never have an average approval rating of at least 50 percent in Gallup's tracker, though that didn't stop him from being highly competitive in the 2020 race and winning the 2024 race with a sweep of the battleground states.
Trump won't be on the ballot again as a candidate, but his poor ratings could hurt Republicans in next year's midterm elections.
Trump's net approval rating fell to its lowest point yet last week in the Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ) average, accompanied by polls showing vulnerabilities with specific groups like independents and on certain key issues like the economy and immigration, though he has somewhat rebounded over the weekend. He's generally oscillated in the mid-to-low 40s for months in opinion polls after starting out his second term slightly above water for the first month and a half of his term.
While the changes from week to week have generally been no more than a couple points, he's consistently receiving less support in his approval rating than the percentage of voters who backed him in November, which was just under 50 percent.
Scott Tranter, the director of data science for DDHQ, said a president's approval rating being poor has been the 'new normal' for administrations dating back at least to the start of Trump's first term. Former President Biden had a honeymoon period for the first few months of his presidency, but his approval rating dropped by August and never recovered, staying in the high-30s to low-40s range.
'There's a reason why populism is becoming big in the United States,' Tranter said. 'In America, it's just easy to hate the government.'
He said people's motivations for why they don't approve of a certain president may vary greatly depending on their political beliefs, but it's resulting in no president being that widely liked in the modern era.
'It's kind of like someone saying, 'I don't like McDonald's,' and one person doesn't like McDonald's because they're vegan, and the other person doesn't like McDonald's because it's high in fat,' he said. 'It's due to completely different reasons, but they both hate McDonald's.'
What is thermostatic opinion?
Hanson said some of Trump's declining numbers can be explained by 'thermostatic opinion, a term in political science that describes opinions changing as a result of government action.
'People start to change their minds once they see the policy changes at the national level, and they react against it,' he said. 'If they were on the fence before, if they were a little bit uncertain, they now have new information, and they turn against what they're seeing,' he said.
One of the issues where this effect has been arguably more pronounced recently has been immigration, which has consistently been one of Trump's strongest areas in public opinion.
Several polls have found public approval of Trump's handling of immigration dropping. The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research recorded a 6-point drop on the issue from March to a poll this month, while a Reuters/Ipsos poll placed his approval on it at 41 percent.
Hanson pointed to the 'visceral' images of raids from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on television as turning some off who previously supported Trump's calls for deportations, which during the campaign focused mostly on those who have committed crimes while in the country.
While Trump has railed against those in the country illegally who have been accused of committing violence, many who have been rounded up in ICE raids and facing deportation haven't been accused of committing violent crimes.
'His focus was we need to get these criminals off the streets, and that's where we're going to focus,' he said. 'But that's not really been the focus. So a little bit of difference from what people thought they were getting versus what they're actually getting, even though he is being aggressive on those issues.'
Tariffs are a theme
Some of Trump's proposals also haven't played out as straightforwardly as he presented them throughout 2024, such as tariffs. While campaigning, Trump argued that other countries were taking advantage of the U.S., and the tariffs would help ensure the country gets a better deal.
But a regular back-and-forth between Trump announcing tariffs and delaying them has defined much of the past six months, which Hanson called 'chaotic.'
Trump has notched victories with several trading partners in securing deals, including one with the European Union on Sunday, but the public's view of his handling of tariffs has consistently been a drag on his overall approval rating.
Charles Franklin, the director of the Marquette Law School Poll, noted that some of the fears of tariffs causing a wider economic downturn haven't happened — at least yet — potentially helping to keep up Trump's support among Republicans, with up to 90 percent regularly saying they approve of him.
But Franklin added that the polls may show a segment of the population that supported Trump in November but whose votes were more about voting against the Democrats and an unpopular incumbent at the time.
'There is one other thing that is easy to ignore, and that is how negative voters were towards Joe Biden in 2024, and I think that needs a lot more credit for explaining the problems with independents voting for Trump,' he said.
Trump has improved slightly among independents in recent days too in the DDHQ tracker, but he's been under 40 percent approval with them for almost two months.
'There's also this question about how negatively people viewed the Biden administration, and that didn't go away when Harris became the nominee,' Franklin said. 'It may have moderated, not much, and it's easy to forget that when we're focused now on everything that Trump does is some of the blame for 2024 among Democrats is they had a very unpopular president.'