The Voters That Have Taken a U-Turn on Trump
When President Trump took office for his second term one year ago, he was — at least compared with his usual polling — relatively popular. His approval rating was above 50 percent, and he had made enormous breakthroughs among groups that have traditionally voted Democratic, like young, nonwhite and lower-turnout voters. It had some of the markings of a potential political realignment. It even brought a much-noted vibe shift. One year later, the vibe has shifted back. The results from today’s New York Times/Siena University poll would have looked fairly typical during his first term. Only 40 percent of registered voters say they approve of Mr. Trump’s performance, and the familiar patterns of American politics have returned. The second Trump coalition has unraveled. The major demographic shifts of the last election have snapped back. In today’s poll, Mr. Trump’s approval rating by demographic group looks almost exactly as it did in Times/Siena polling in the run-up to his defeat in the 2020 presidential election. If anything, young and nonwhite voters are even likelier to disapprove of Mr. Trump than they were then, while he retains most of his support among older and white voters.
Similarly, Democrats have regained their usual advantage among young, nonwhite and low-turnout voters in the race for control of Congress. Overall, Democrats lead by five percentage points among registered voters nationwide — a tally that would easily be enough for the party to take back the House of Representatives. It’s the largest lead for the Democrats in a Times/Siena national poll since 2020, and it’s similar to Joe Biden’s eventual 4.5-point popular vote victory that year. There is one exception to this reversion to the old first-term norm: party identification. Self-identified Democrats had outnumbered Republicans for decades before Republicans edged ahead in 2024, and they continue to lead by three points in today’s poll. It’s a lingering reminder that something like a political realignment — if still quite a bit less than that — really did happen during the Biden years. But already, Mr. Trump has squandered it. Why has Mr. Trump lost so much ground? In one sense, there’s no shortage of explanations. Voters have an unfavorable view of his performance on almost every issue tested in the poll, including his handling of immigration and the economy and his approach to Russia, Israel and other foreign relations. Even over just the last few weeks, another round of new issues could have hurt Mr. Trump’s standing, like the U.S. military operation in Venezuela, his threats against Greenland, or the fatal shooting of a woman by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis. Still, there’s more evidence that the economy is driving voters away from Mr. Trump than anything else. On question after question, voters give him negative marks on his handling of that issue, including just 34 percent who approve of his handling of the cost of living, compared with 64 percent who disapprove. This is his second-worst result in the poll, trailing only his handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files. And over our last two polls, the voters who have soured on Mr. Trump — those who say they voted for him in 2024 but disapprove of him today — have been likeliest to cite an economic issue as the biggest problem facing the country: 44 percent of the Trump defectors cite economic issues, compared with just 24 percent of other voters. This is a familiar story. The economy was one of the biggest reasons these same voters flipped to supporting Mr. Trump in the first place. In the last campaign, these voters disapproved of Mr. Biden’s handling of the economy, said it was the most important issue, and said they thought Mr. Trump would handle the issue well. Today, all of those conditions have flipped, and these voters have as well. To be sure, all of those other issues — including the new ones, like ICE’s conduct in Minneapolis or Mr. Trump’s threats against Greenland — contribute to the president’s political problems, just as immigration or the backlash against “woke” contributed to Mr. Biden’s unpopularity and Kamala Harris’s defeat. About half of today’s defectors from Mr. Trump cited something other than the economy as the most important problem facing the country. Many of those issues — democracy, polarization or even Mr. Trump himself — reflect deep concern about his actions among an electorally decisive sliver of voters who backed him in the last election. But on balance, the poll suggests that Mr. Trump is held back as much or more by persistent dissatisfaction with the economy and the state of the country as by a backlash against his extraordinary conduct. This is not necessarily a huge surprise. He won the presidency despite facing criminal charges and a felony conviction, after all. But back in 2024, political gravity was dragging down the Democrats: Mr. Biden was the unpopular president who presided over the high and rising cost of living. This time, the same forces are dragging down Mr. Trump. You can read the full story on the poll here. Text experiments, continuedAs with our last two polls, this Times/Siena poll contains an experiment using text messages. We fielded this poll as two parallel surveys. One half was telephone only, like a typical Times/Siena poll. The other half of respondents received a text message inviting them to take the poll online or in a subsequent phone call. When we did this in New York City last summer, the text and phone-only samples looked pretty similar. This encouraged us to try it nationwide in September, but unfortunately the people who responded to the text messages were so much more likely to be Democrats that we adjusted that sample to match the partisan makeup of the usual Times/Siena telephone poll. This time, we added money to the mix: All those who received a text were offered a $20 online gift card if they took the survey. Unfortunately, the additional incentive didn’t do the trick: Response rates increased, but the makeup of the sample did not improve. Needless to say, this is disappointing: We made a greater effort to reach respondents, and it didn’t pay off. To ensure it didn’t influence the overall results of the survey, the text sample was once again adjusted to match the results of the telephone poll by 2024 recall vote and leaned party identification. We’ll report more on what we found in a few months, when we’ll start putting in any post-2024 methodological changes to the Times/Siena poll before the midterms heat up. But at first glance, it is looking likelier that the Times/Siena poll will remain a telephone-only survey for another cycle. Read past editions of the newsletter here. If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. 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