Poll position: Where Trump stands with Americans 11 weeks into his 2nd White House term
It is 11 weeks into his second administration, and President Donald Trump is not slowing down.
The president has signed 111 executive orders since his inauguration on Jan. 20, far outpacing any of his immediate predecessors in the White House.
“More than any in American history,” Trump touted a week ago.
Trump has been expanding the powers of the presidency, as he has upended long-standing government policy and made major cuts to the federal workforce through an avalanche of executive orders and actions.
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While Trump regularly showcases his performance steering the nation, some of the latest national public opinion polls suggest Americans may not be so pleased with the job he’s doing as president.
The president stands at 43% approval and 53% disapproval in a Reuters/Ipsos survey conducted March 31-April 2, and he is also underwater – at 46%-51% – in a Wall Street Journal poll in the field March 27-April 1.
While a survey from the Daily Mail, which was also conducted over the past week, suggested Trump’s approval rating is in positive territory, the majority of the national public opinion surveys in the field since mid-March indicate Trump in negative territory.
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Trump has seen his numbers edge down slightly since the start of his second term, when an average of his polls indicated the president’s approval rating in the low 50s and his disapproval in the mid-40s.
Contributing to the slide are increasing concerns over the economy and inflation, which was a pressing issue that kept former President Joe Biden’s approval ratings well below water for most of his presidency.
Additionally, the latest surveys were conducted nearly entirely before Trump’s blockbuster tariff announcement last week, which sparked a trade war with the nation’s top trading partners, triggered a massive sell-off in the financial markets, and increased concerns about a recession.
When asked about the market plunge, the president told reporters on Sunday evening, “Sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something.”
Daron Shaw, a politics professor and chair at the University of Texas who serves as a member of the Fox News Decision Team and is the Republican partner on the Fox News poll, calls the economy “the 800-pound gorilla.”
According to the Reuters/Ipsos poll, only 37% of Americans approve of the job the president’s doing on the economy, with 52% giving him a thumbs down.
Trump’s numbers on the economy are slightly better in the Wall Street Journal poll – 44% approval and 52% disapproval – but still underwater.
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Shaw suggested that over the past week the president has been “slowly losing the argument that tariffs are part of a larger program that will bring down prices.”
“He’s got his work cut out for him….he’s losing the narrative,” Shaw said of Trump. “He’s got to make the case that tariffs are part of a larger economic plan that’s going to deal with problems that people feel.”
The only issue where Trump is in positive territory in the Reuters/Ipsos and Wall Street Journal polls is immigration and border security, which, along with inflation, was another top issue that helped catapult him back into the White House.
However, Shaw noted that Trump’s success has blunted the importance of the issue.
“The broader narrative is that he’s had success on border security and has essentially tabled that as an issue,” he argued. “One of the problems of succeeding is that it’s something that you no longer really talk about. It’s no longer at the top of people’s issue priorities. So one of his dominant issues has been neutralized by his success on the issue.”
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While Trump’s poll numbers are edging down in most surveys, they are still superior to ratings during his first term in office. Trump’s poll numbers were almost entirely in negative territory in most surveys for the entirety of his first term in office.
“Keep these numbers in perspective. The numbers he’s averaging right now are still higher than he was at any point during his first presidency,” veteran Republican pollster Neil Newhouse told Fox News.
Newhouse emphasized that Trump’s Republican “base is strongly behind him,” which was not the case at the start of his first term in the White House.