NPR Poll: Many Voters Give Trump Failing Grade

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Hey there.

It's the NPR Politics Podcast.

I'm Sarah McCammon.

I cover politics.

I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent.

And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent.

And today on the show, a pulse check.

Nearly 100 days into his second term.

How are Americans rating Donald Trump's job performance?

or a pulse check. Nearly 100 days into his second term, how are Americans rating Donald Trump's job performance? We'll get into that and more in the latest NPR PBS News Marist poll.
Domenico, you're kind of our in-house expert on these polls. Big picture, people are not pleased with the president's performance, I think it's safe to say.
I mean, just walk us through what you're seeing in this poll. Yeah, we had more than 1,400 people that we interviewed in the survey with PBS News and Marist College, and 45% of the people who answered the poll gave Trump a failing grade.
About half of that, 23%, gave him an A. Overwhelmingly, those 45%, the Democrats who were surveyed, 80% of them gave him an f but only about half of republicans 54 percent gave trump an a you might expect that to be a little higher a lot the rest of them gave him a b independence though i think is the place where a lot of politicians look at to see whether or not the people who are actually persuadable are on their side or not.
And he's having real trouble with independents because only 36 percent of independents approve of the job he's doing. He's at 42 percent overall when it comes to the job he's doing.
You know, as you talk about that, I'm just struck by once again how polarizing this president is. I mean, you've got a good chunk of people, almost half, not far from half, giving him an F.
And then, you know, about a quarter giving him an A. That's quite a split.
It's not like everybody's giving him a C. It's just this big divide.
Yeah, and I don't know that we'll see much change as far as with his base of people. I mean, his base of people are giving him a very long leash.
He's having some real trouble when it comes to his use of tariffs and on the economy. I mean, I think we can all argue here or would agree that the thing that got Trump over the finish line was his promise to bring prices down.
And all the experts say that tariffs are most likely to increase prices and do the very opposite of the thing that he wants. And only 34 percent of people overall say that they approve of his use of tariffs.
Only 39% say that they approve of his handling of the economy. That is the lowest score for Trump ever, including during his first term, when the economy was seen as a strength.
And the big question is, how will they express those feelings? In other words, will they stick with the Republican Party anyway, because our politics is now so polarized? Or will they somehow take it out on him and his party? Because he seems pretty impervious to polls. There are some polls, otherwise known as the bond markets, that do have an effect on him, because you see him backtracking on the tariffs.
But for the most part, he doesn't seem to care about public opinion except for the opinion of his base. And on that, he feels very, very comfortable his base is consolidated.
But when it comes to the tariffs, Mara, I mean, this poll is happening before the impact of the tariffs is really being felt. I mean, some people are feeling it in the stock market.
But by and large, this policy has not taken full effect. How do you think that's going to play out?

Well, that's the thing to watch.

In a couple months when inventories run out, people are going to start paying more. They're not going to be able to get certain products.
Small businesses are going to go bankrupt. You see a number of economists now flat out predicting there will be a recession.
One of the other things in our poll that was really interesting was that the string has run out on who is responsible for the current economic situation. For a very long time, Trump was able to say it's all Biden's fault.
But in our poll and others, it shows that people now see this as Trump's economy. Yeah, by a 60 to 39 percent margin, people said that this is Trump's economy, not the result of something that he inherited.
That includes 61 percent of independents and a third of Republicans. So that, you know, continuing to blame Biden is going to run out eventually and looks like right now for Donald Trump.
That's the case. OK, so that's the economy.
One of the other really major issues in the campaign was, of course, immigration. It's also been a major area of policy action by the administration so far.

How are people feeling about Trump's immigration policies? Well, this was kind of a surprising finding because we found a slim majority of people are now disapproving of Donald Trump's handling of immigration, which had been a relative strength of his. It's been the thing that he's wanted to focus on.

It's been the thing that he feels like is really what gives him the wind at his back to be able to go forward with what he views as a political mandate. But even on that thing, it is now started to creep downward.
And again, 37 percent of independents approve of how he's handling immigration. And I thought it was interesting because when you look at specifically how the administration is handling the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man who has been in the United States for some decades, crossed into the United States illegally and was mistakenly deported by the Trump administration's own admission, only 35 percent approve of how the administration has been handling his case, including only 31 percent of independents and only 73 percent of Republicans.
I know that sounds like a lot, but compared to some of the other things in this, like immigration overall, that's fairly low for Republicans. It actually ties Republicans with tariffs for the lowest thing in our poll about what they approve of Trump's handling.
And that's really significant because immigration is so core to Donald Trump's worldview. You know, ever since 2015, when he announced he was running for president and he said that Mexico was sending its criminals and rapists across the border, this has been Trump's go-to issue since then.
And what's also significant about these numbers is we are just at the beginning. We have not had mass deportations yet.
We have not had meatpacking plants closed down because all the workers are either in the shadows now, afraid to come to work, or they've been deported. We're not there yet.
These are people looking at how the immigration policies have been carried out and not liking them. Okay, time for a break.
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Domenico, as we look at the numbers from this NPR poll, what surprises you, if anything? Did anything stand out? I think we talked a lot about immigration, but I think that a lot of that actually was most surprising to me, especially the figures on Kilmar Obrego Garcia and how people felt about that, but also kind of how quickly people think that Trump is moving. I mean, certainly when you look back at the 100 days, there's a lot that he's aggressively tried to move forward on and do.
And an increasing majority, 61 percent, say that Trump is rushing to make changes. That's up five points from last month.
So if he wasn't getting the message, people are sending the message even more so. Four in 10, mostly Republicans, think that he's doing what needs to be done and are willing to sort of give him a little bit more leash on making these changes to the federal government that they support.
The overwhelming majority here also say that they think Trump should follow court orders even if he doesn't like them. 85% said that, which is a significant chunk of Republicans as well.
But I think there's a little bit of social acceptance in that kind of a question. Because when you follow up with some of the folks about whether or not they think he's disobeying some court orders, they think he's not.
So I think there's a lot to be filled in on that as well. And interestingly, our poll is not an outlier, tracks very similarly to the approval ratings he's getting in other polls.
So there's a pattern here that lots of polls pointing to unpopularity. Yes, lots of polls.
Now, what effect that will have remains to be seen. And I think the Republicans in Congress are the ones who are most likely to feel the political impacts of some of this because Trump is constitutionally barred from running for a third term, even though he's flirted with the idea of running, certainly wanting to keep that idea out there.
But we know that Republicans are going to be on the ballot in 2026, and they're going to have to deal with whatever the fallout is from tariffs, if it is negative, from these immigration policies, if it continues to trend in that direction. And they have a very slim majority in the House.
And Democrats really feel like they need to step in here because it's vital for Democrats to be able to take over at least one chamber of Congress. And it's probably not going to be the Senate.
Is there any reason to think that Republicans worried about their electoral prospects next year will push back against Trump's policies in any significant way? No. One of the features of polling about Trump is that he has a low ceiling and a high floor.
He's never going to get super unpopular because he has such a strong grip on his party. He's never going to get super popular because he is such a polarizing figure.
But I think one of the biggest features of the Trump presidency 2.0 is how compliant Republicans in Congress have been. No pushback, even though privately they'll tell you that they think that some of his picks for cabinet are horrifying to them.
But they won't vote against them. So I think the chances of Republicans, even if they're facing tough races next time, no, they're not going to break with him.

And we know why.

I mean, there's no incentive for many of them to do that because there's a shrinking number of swing districts in the country.

It's why you see one of the only congressional Republicans who's spoken out is someone like Don Bacon from Nebraska.

He's in a district that Kamala Harris, a Democrat, won in 2024.

So there's only three of those. Three Republicans in House districts where Kamala Harris won.
That is a very small number. Yeah, there's an incentive for them with independence in their districts to show that they're being able to stand up to the president.
But everybody else, most people, if they were to stand up to Trump, that would almost immediately mean a primary challenge and lots of money that they'd have to spend. And the people who have gone against Trump, the Republicans who have voted against him, the Republicans who have spoken out, most of them are not in Congress anymore and have faced challenges.
You know, I want to ask one more question before we go. And we've talked a lot about how unpopular some of these policies are overall.
But at the same time, you know, Trump is doing the things he campaigned on. Tariffs, deportations, these were central messages of his campaign.
So none of this should be a surprise. Now he's one, he's doing it.
A lot of people don't like it. How do you explain that disconnect? Because they either weren't paying attention or they didn't take some of this stuff seriously.
I've never covered an election where more voters told me they were going to vote for Trump. And then you would say, well, do you agree with this, this? Oh, no, he's not going to do that.
I'm against that. But he's just kidding or he's sarcastic.
People voted for him thinking he wouldn't do what he promised to do. That's unheard of.
I think a lot of people did vote for him knowing that that's what he would do. But people vote differently for different things.
I mean, there were people- Well, they wanted him to lower prices. There were people who wanted him to do all of this government restructuring and wanted him to do most of the things that he's doing.
But then there were people, like Mara is saying, who crossed over to vote for Trump, who said, you know, prices are just too high. Inflation is too high.
I liked the pre-COVID economy that Donald Trump was in charge of. So let's go back to that.
And there was this nostalgia for that. That's the advantage for Trump, that he doesn't have to think politically about those folks.
And he's trying to put in place a lot of the things that he has thought about and advocated for for 40 years.

Okay, that's all for today.

I'm Sarah McCammon.

I cover politics.

I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent.
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