President-elect Donald Trump holds a press conference at the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida on January 7. Scott Olson/Getty Images hide title
As Donald Trump prepares to take office again, a new NPR/PBS News/Marist Poll found that while Trump claims to have an "unprecedentedly powerful mandate," he may have to be cautious about how far he decides to go to achieve what he wants to do.
More people view him negatively than positively, with a majority opposed to pardoning those convicted of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, and on whether to mass deport immigrants without legal status in the United States Disagreement.
Perhaps most importantly, Americans have high expectations that their personal finances will improve under Trump, but more believe tariffs will hurt rather than help the economy.
Trump promises bold action, but as an NPR poll shows, the politics can be tricky. Presidents often become vulnerable through overreach. They often mistakenly believe that because they were elected, they have the authority to handle everything on the agenda. Apparently, this is not the case.
"The first round of the second semester has not gone well with the public," said Lee Miringoff, president of the Marist Public Opinion Institute, which surveyed 1,387 adults. "Americans don't believe in the pillars of Trump's agenda, including pardons and tariffs. Mass deportations will only get mixed reviews."
At the heart of Trump’s re-election is negative sentiment about the economy. Voters have said throughout the campaign that their biggest concern is inflation, particularly prices. But Trump said after the election that lowering prices could “difficult“Despite his promises to fix the economy.
President Joe Biden and his running successor, Vice President Harris, are hurting politically from inflation, and polls show a bleak outlook for Biden's presidency. In this final survey of his presidency, only 42% approve of the job he has done, and a slim majority say his performance as president will be below average or worse.
It's also a warning sign that the economy can make or break a presidency for Trump, who has attracted more attention ahead of his second inauguration over plans for Greenland that could annex Canada and reclaim it. Panama Canal Zone and renamed it Greenland. The Gulf of Mexico is the "Gulf of America," not a serious economic plan.
The survey was conducted Jan. 7-9 and has a margin of error of +/- 3.2 percentage points, so the results could be about 3 percentage points lower or higher. It uses a variety of methods to contact respondents, including by mobile phone, landline, text message, and online in English and Spanish.
For most presidents, Americans' view of them is no better than it was early in their administration.
But Trump started with a net negative favorable rating, with 44% approving and 49% disapproving. Trump has never received a net positive rating since Marist began asking him about his favorability in 2016, but a small minority appears to be refusing to judge at the moment, as 49% of negative views correlate with the lowest negative rating for him.
There are clear gender differences in people's opinions of Trump - 53% of men have a positive view of him, while only 35% of women do.
White evangelical Christians (69%), whites without a college degree (65%) and whites in rural areas (57%) view Trump best.
Those least positive about the incoming president include white women with college degrees (29%), women who live in small cities or suburbs (34%) and women who live in large cities (36%).
Only 41% of Latinos have a positive view of Trump. The sample size in the poll means there is a high margin of error for such subgroups, but given Trump's record win among Latinos in the 2024 election, it's an important one to watch among multiple surveys number.
It also raises the stakes for Trump and Republicans when it comes to the importance of improving how the economy feels in the coming years.
From pardoning those who stormed the Capitol on January 6, to mass deportations of immigrants, to imposing tariffs on other countries, Americans either disagree with Trump or are divided on whether these ideas are good ideas.
Turning to Jan. 6, days after the fourth anniversary of the siege, 59% said it was an insurrection to overturn a free and fair election, rather than a protest by patriots to stop a stolen election. Among Republicans, however, 61% believed it was a protest by patriots.
An overwhelming majority (62%) said they would not approve if Trump pardoned people convicted of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Vice President-elect J.D. Vance said Sunday that people who "commit violence" should not be pardoned; Trump was less clear on how he distinguished between "peaceful protesters" and those who committed violence that day. (See NPR's database of accused persons.)
Trump scored higher than Harris or Biden on the issue of greater trust in immigration ahead of the election, but when asked specifically about America's mass illegal deportations of immigrants, the ratings were mixed — 49 % of people support it and 49% oppose it.
But to illustrate why this is such a salient issue for Trump's campaign, not only do nearly 8 in 10 Republicans support mass deportations, but 53% of Republicans support mass deportations as well. strongly Support it.
Only a quarter of Democrats support the proposal, while independents are evenly split.
On the economy, nearly 6 in 10 said they think the economy is not working well for them personally, including 73% of Republicans. Before the pandemic, two-thirds of respondents said they thought the economy was working well for them.
Nostalgia for the pre-pandemic economy may have been a big factor in Trump's victory in November, as well as the 44% of people in the survey who said they expected household finances to improve in the coming year, compared with just 22% % said they thought their household financial situation would get better or worse.
Forty-four percent of respondents are the most optimistic about their near-term personal financial situation since Marist has asked the question over the past 15 years.
Republicans (63%) are most likely to believe their financial situation will get better, which isn't surprising given how partisan their views are on the economy.
But when it comes to imposing tariffs or other fees on products imported from other countries, which Trump has promoted as potentially solving many economic problems, 48%-31% of respondents were more likely to think tariffs would Hurt the economy, not help it. .
This week several Trump Cabinet nominees will have a series of confirmation hearings, including Fox News personality Pete Hegseth, whom Trump nominated to be defense secretary. Hegseth faced his only day of questioning on Tuesday.
More than half (55%) said they had no opinion or were unsure about him. Only 19% held a favorable opinion, while 26% held an unfavorable opinion.
Trump's nominee for health and human services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, has an approval rating of 40%-37%, with 23% undecided. In fact, he had the highest net rating and was the only one to receive a net positive rating among those surveyed, including Trump, Hegseth, Secretary of State nominee Sen. Marco Rubio and advisor Elon Musk.
Rubio has had a checkered history with Trump, but has gained Trump's favor in recent years, with his approval rating at 25 percent positive and 34 percent negative.
Musk is the world's richest man and has donated more than $250 million to Trump's re-election. He was tasked with conducting outside consulting work to identify government waste. Only 37% have a favorable opinion of the Tesla and SpaceX CEO, who also owns social media platform X. 46% view him unfavorably.
In addition to a middling final approval rating of 42% approval, 50% disapproval, Biden was viewed by 53% as either potentially below average (19%) or one of the worst presidents (34%) people.
Only 19% said he would be above average or one of the best. More than a quarter said he would be considered average. Even among Democrats, only 44% said he would be remembered as at least above average.
Combined with average or better, 47% said Biden would be considered at least average. That's higher than when Trump first left office in January 2021, when only 37% said this.
But both are far lower than former President Barack Obama, when more than two-thirds (68%) said he would be viewed as at least average and 40% said he would be viewed as at least average. is at least above average.