Latest news with #approvalRatings
Fox News
22-05-2025
- Business
- Fox News
Trump's 2nd-term approval ratings dip despite border security gains
Four months into his second tour of duty in the White House, President Donald Trump's approval ratings remain slightly underwater. The president stands at 46% approval and 54% disapproval in a new national survey by Marquette Law School. And Trump is at 42% approval and 52% disapproval in a Reuters/Ipsos poll. Most, but not all, of the latest national surveys place the president's approval rating in negative territory, with a handful indicating Trump is above water. Trump has aggressively asserted executive authority in his second term, overturning longstanding government policy and aiming to make major cuts to the federal workforce through an avalanche of sweeping and controversial executive orders and actions, with some aimed at addressing grievances he has held since his first term. Trump started his second administration with poll numbers in positive territory, but his poll numbers started to slide soon after his late-January inauguration. But two issues where the president remains at or above water in some surveys are border security and immigration, which were front and center in Trump's successful 2024 campaign to win back the White House. Trump stands at 56% approval on border security and 50% approval on immigration in the Marquette Law School poll, which was conducted May 5-15. But Trump's muscular moves on border security and immigration, which have sparked controversy and legal pushback, don't appear to be helping his overall approval ratings. "Immigration is declining now as a salient issue," said Daron Shaw, who serves as a member of the Fox News Decision Team and is the Republican partner on the Fox News poll. Shaw, a politics professor and chair at the University of Texas, said "immigration and especially border security are beginning to lose steam as one of the top-three issues facing the country. Republicans still rate them fairly highly, but Democrats and independents, who had kind of joined the chorus in 2024, have moved on and in particular moved back to the economy as a focal point." Pointing to Trump, Shaw added that "when you have success on an issue, it tends to move to the back burner." Contributing to the slide over the past couple of months in Trump's overall approval ratings was his performance on the economy and, in particular, inflation, which were pressing issues that kept former President Joe Biden's approval ratings well below water for most of his presidency. Trump's blockbuster tariff announcement in early April sparked a trade war with some of the nation's top trading partners and triggered a massive sell-off in the financial markets and increased concerns about a recession. But the markets have rebounded, thanks in part to a truce between the U.S. and China in their tariff standoff as Trump tapped the brakes on his controversial tariff implementation. Trump stood at 37% approval on tariffs and 34% on inflation/cost of living in the Marquette Law School poll. And he stood at 39% on the economy and 33% on cost of living in the Reuters/Ipsos poll, which was conducted May 16-18. Doug Heye, a longtime GOP strategist and former RNC and Bush administration official, pointed to last year's election, saying, "The main reason Trump won was to lower prices. Prices haven't lowered, and polls are reflecting that." "With the exception of gas prices, there hasn't been much of a reduction in prices," Shaw said. "Prices haven't come down, and it's not clear that people will say the absence of inflation is an economic victory. They still feel that an appreciable portion of their money is going to pay for basic things," he added. "What Trump is realizing is that prices have to come down for him to be able to declare success."
Fox News
07-05-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
President Trump's approval ratings slide, but Democrats' poll numbers hitting new lows
President Donald Trump has some polling problems with his approval ratings sliding into negative territory since he reentered the White House three and a half months ago. But he's far from alone when it comes to taking a political punch in public opinion. The opposing Democratic Party's favorable ratings keep sinking to new lows. Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin said this past weekend in a "Fox News Sunday" interview that the party's focus right now is "squarely on making sure that we stand up for hardworking Americans who are being left behind in this Trump economy." But many Americans apparently don't believe that Democrats are up to the task. KAMALA HARRIS TAKES NEXT STEP IN RETURN TO POLITICAL SPOTLIGHT The Democrats' ratings stood underwater in the latest Fox News national poll at 41% favorable and 56% unfavorable in a survey conducted April 18-21. That's an all-time low for the Democrats in Fox News polling. And for the first time in a decade, the party's standing was lower than that of the GOP, which stood at 44% favorable and 54% unfavorable. The figures were reversed last summer, when Fox News last asked the party favorability question in one of its surveys. HEAD HERE FOR THE LATEST FOX NEWS POLLING The Fox News poll is far from an outlier. The Democratic Party's favorable ratings were well in negative territory in a Pew Research national survey - 38% favorable, 60% unfavorable - conducted in early April and at 36% favorable, 60% unfavorable in a Wall Street Journal poll in the field a couple of weeks earlier. And national polls conducted in February by Quinnipiac University and March by CNN and by NBC News also indicated the favorable ratings for the Democratic Party sinking to all-time lows. But there's more. Confidence in the Democratic Party's congressional leadership sunk to an all-time low, according to a Gallup poll conducted early last month. The confidence rating for Democrats' leadership in Congress stood at 25% in the survey, which was nine points below the previous low of 34% recorded in 2023. The semi-annual Harvard Youth Poll, which was released late last month, indicated that approval ratings for Democrats in Congress among Americans aged 18-29 nosedived. POLL POSITION: WHERE TRUMP STANDS 15 MONTHS INTO HIS SECOND PRESIDENCY An ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll conducted in mid-April indicated that more respondents trusted Trump (40%) than Democrats in Congress (32%) to handle the nation's main problems. And a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted late last month suggested Republicans hold a significant advantage over Democrats on two top issues: the economy and immigration. The Democratic Party has been in the political wilderness since last November's election setbacks, when Republicans won back control of the White House and the Senate and defended their fragile House majority. And Republicans made gains among Black and Hispanic voters as well as younger voters, all traditional members of the Democratic Party's base. Since Trump's return to power, an increasingly angry and energized base of Democrats is pushing for party leaders to take a stronger stand in pushing back against the president's sweeping and controversial agenda during the opening months of his second administration. "What we've seen over the last few months is some Democrats taking it upon themselves to tackle what has been a larger brand problem over the past decade and a half," a Democrat strategist and communicator who's a veteran of presidential campaigns told Fox News. The anger not only at Trump and Republicans but also at fellow Democrats appears to be a factor in the party's polling woes, with the drop in positivity toward the Democrats in the Fox News poll partially being a self-inflicted wound. Party favorability among self-identified Democrats plunged 10 points from last summer (87%) to last month (77%) in the survey. At the same time, the Republican Party saw a slight improvement among their party faithful: 83% of self-identified Republicans had a favorable view in 2024 vs. 85% in April. But there's a silver lining for the Democrats. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP "The higher favorable rating for the Republican Party is entirely due to Democrats feeling less favorable toward their party than Republicans do toward theirs," said Democrat pollster Chris Anderson, who conducts the Fox News surveys with Republican Daron Shaw. "This in and of itself is unlikely to translate into midterm success for the GOP as Democrats say they will almost universally vote for their party and independents favor the Democrats as well." The Fox News poll indicates that if the 2026 midterm elections were held today, 49% of voters would back a generic Democrat in their congressional district, with 42% supporting the generic Republican candidate. Fox News' Victoria Balara contributed to this report.
