Sarah Palin once said, “Polls? Nah... they're for strippers and cross country skiers.”
Maybe that’s your take on polls, maybe not. But one thing’s for sure, there’s hardly anything more American than opinion polling, and hardly a more tracked metric than the President’s approval rating.
So how’s the 45th and 47th president doing?
President Donald Trump is still less than three months into his second term as President of the United States, and while he’s followed through on several campaign promises, Americans appear split on how he’s doing with certain issues.
The latest Harvard CAPS/Harris poll found that 49% of registered voters approved of Trump’s overall job performance, down from his total last month of 52%. His disapproval rating was also found to be at 46%.
Trump’s “general ratings have been holding up and he has much higher approval ratings than [former President] Biden. We show a dip but it’s within the margin of error and so we will see next month if it’s just random fluctuation or a trend,” pollster Mark Penn said.
But where Trump’s numbers really start to diverge is how he is handling specific issues like the economy and immigration.
According to the poll, 53% of respondents think Trump is doing a good job when it comes to immigration, though that number is also down from last month’s 56%.
Immigration is also Trump’s strongest-performing issue, as the pollsters noted that for half a dozen other issues he’s trending downwards.
On the economy, 45% approve of the job Trump is doing, down from last month’s 49%. His foreign affairs approval rating is also down 3% from last month, now sitting at 45%. Other issues that saw declines included administering the government (47%), handling inflation (43%), and returning America to its values (49%).
So why is Trump trending downward?
Aaron Dusso, an associate professor of political science at Indiana University in Indianapolis, shared with WWL News Radio that a lot of focus right now is on the economy, which Trump has lost ground on when comparing this week’s numbers to this point of his first term in 2017.
“Now he’s negative, according to this most recent poll, he’s minus eight. So you’re talking about maybe a 16-point swing from his first term to now. That’s a big problem that he’s going to want to try and address soon because it ate up Biden’s administration,” Dusso said.
Among those considered to be Trump’s staunchest supporters, Dusso said there will be little blame that he receives,despite his policies and actions having an impact on things like the economy.
“They’re going to interpret numbers and things that are happening with social security or with the economy going down and tariffs and prices going up. They’re not going to blame Donald Trump,” Dusso said. “They’re to find a way to convince themselves that it’s not Donald Trump.”