President Donald Trump made quick work of his first week-plus back in office — ticking off a number of campaign-trail promises, issuing a boatload of pardons (some controversial) and enacting retribution on his political opponents.
So far, the early polling shows Trump starting with more backing from voters — and more wiggle room — than he had going into his first term in the White House. But it remains to be seen how voters will judge his first actions as president.
The former president entered his second term with a better image rating than he had in January 2017. NBC News/Wall Street Journal polling from the days before his first inauguration found just 38% of adults giving him a positive rating, while Fox News found 42% of registered voters viewed him positively at that point.
Now, Fox News’ most recent poll showed Trump with a 50% positive rating among registered voters and a 50% unfavorable rating. A new Wall Street Journal poll found that 47% of registered voters viewed him favorably, while 51% viewed him unfavorably. Both polls were conducted before Trump took office.
Polling is split on Americans’ expectations for Trump. According to CNN polling, 56% of American adults say they expect Trump to be a very good or fairly good president, while 43% expect him to be fairly poor or very poor. (CNN’s preinaugural poll in January 2021 found slightly higher expectations ahead of Joe Biden’s term, while its polling in January 2017 found adults split on their expectations for Trump, with 48% saying they think he’d be very or fairly good and 48% saying he’d be very or fairly poor.)
A preinaugural poll from The New York Times and Ipsos found that 47% of adults are either excited or optimistic about his presidency, while 51% are either pessimistic or worried about his presidency.
Meanwhile, when it comes to some of the key issues Trump has pursued in the earliest days of his second term, the polling shows both opportunity and peril for his presidency.
Polling from CNN and The New York Times showed that the economy is far and away the most important issue on Americans’ minds. But many of the headlines Trump has made so far center around issues like immigration and pardons, particularly his decision to issue a sweeping pardon for those convicted over their conduct during the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
Americans appear broadly more open to Trump’s efforts on deportations than they do on the Jan. 6-related pardons. The polls also show that public support for Trump’s actions falls off when voters consider the potential outcomes if (or when) Trump takes the hardest line on those issues.
The Wall Street Journal found just 38% of registered voters backed blanket pardons for all Jan. 6 defendants (57% opposed it). That’s compared with 43% who said they’d back pardons for all except those convicted of assaulting police officers and 54% who opposed it. (Trump ended up pardoning virtually all who faced federal charges, including those convicted of violent offenses. A handful of others convicted on conspiracy charges got their sentences commuted.)
On immigration enforcement, there appears to be a majority or strong plurality baseline of support for Trump’s broad pledge of enacting widespread deportations. The Wall Street Journal found that 52% of registered voters favor a call to “detain and deport millions of undocumented immigrants” and 45% oppose it, while 55% of adults in the New York Times/Ipsos poll supported deporting all immigrants in America illegally and 42% opposed it.
Restricting deportations to only those here illegally with criminal records is far more popular: 87% of adults support the policy, per the New York Times/Ipsos poll, and 74% of registered voters in the Wall Street Journal poll back it.
But deporting others is less popular. Fully 70% of registered voters oppose deporting undocumented immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for more than a decade and have paid taxes without having a criminal record, according to the Wall Street Journal poll. The survey also showed 57% oppose deporting undocumented immigrants with children who are American citizens (38% approved of the proposal).
On foreign policy, 60% of adults (per the New York Times/Ipsos poll) agree broadly with the idea that the U.S. should “pay less attention to problems overseas and concentrate on problems here at home,” aligning broadly with Trump’s campaign rhetoric, compared to the 38% who said it’s “best for the future of our country to be active in world affairs.” Narrow majorities believe America is giving too much aid to Ukraine and Israel. (In each case, about 30% want to maintain the status quo, while less than 20% want to see an increase in aid.)
And amid Trump’s criticism of the Biden administration’s policies about transgender people, and Trump’s executive order declaring the federal government recognizes only two sexes, male and female, there are important divides in the country about transgender issues.
American adults are broadly split on whether society has struck the right balance in accommodating transgender people. According to The New York Times/Ipsos’ numbers, 49% say society has gone too far in striking the right balance, 21% say society hasn’t gone far enough, and another 28% say society has struck a reasonable balance.
But there’s far more support for another one of Trump’s positions: banning transgender women (defined in the poll as “athletes who were male at birth but who currently identify as female”) from women’s sports. Fully 79% of adults in that same poll backed that proposal, compared with just 18% who disagreed. And 71% said they believed no one under age 18 should have access to “puberty blocking drugs or hormone therapies” used in transgender care.
How much runway do voters typically give new presidents?
While Trump comes into office in better shape than he did in his first term — and the swing voters who backed him appear open to giving him some wiggle room — an analysis of NBC News polling spanning the last five presidencies shows how short honeymoons can be in the White House.
Biden saw his 51% approval rating in April 2021 slip to 45% by late October and down to 41% by March 2022. His approval rating never got above 46% for the rest of his presidency in NBC News polling.
Trump’s first approval rating in NBC polling was 44% in February 2017, a number that slipped immediately to 39% by the third NBC News poll of that year, in May. But Trump’s approval rating was more inelastic than other presidents of recent memory, staying inside a relatively narrow range of 39% to 47% for his entire presidency.
Then-President Barack Obama’s 60% approval rating in early March 2009 stayed consistent in an NBC News poll the following month. But his approval rating slid in four of the next five polls, though his low of 47% in December 2009 (the first NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll that found him below 50% approval) was substantially higher than the depths Trump’s or Biden’s numbers reached. After the initial dive, Obama’s approval rating oscillated around 50% until the summer before the 2010 midterm elections.
Then-President George W. Bush’s first year was marred by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, which makes comparison to the first years of other presidencies difficult.
And while then-President Bill Clinton’s approval rating ticked up from 51% shortly after he took office to 57% in March 1993, it slid down to 41% by June 1993, before a long march up back to 60% on the first anniversary of his taking office. Clinton’s approval rating then proceeded to slide in 1994 all the way down to 43% before Republicans took over Congress in that year’s midterm elections.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
