Trump's polling has already collapsed
It took under 100 days for buyer's remorse to set in.
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At the 100 day mark of his presidency, Donald Trump’s honeymoon is already over. His polling numbers are atrocious and getting worse.
On Inauguration Day, Trump was at +7.5 net approval, according to pollster G. Elliott Morris’s aggregate numbers — not good in comparison to other presidents at the start of their tenure, but better than his first term. Barely three months later, however, Trump has dropped almost 16 points.
Trump is now 43.6 approve/53 disapprove, or nearly 10 points underwater. That’s slightly lower than where he was in April 2017 — making it the worst ever approval for a POTUS in history at this point in his term.
Morris’s numbers are not outliers. A CNN poll published over the weekend pegged Trump’s approval rating at 41 percent, “the lowest for any newly elected president at 100 days dating back at least to Dwight Eisenhower — including Trump’s own first term.” Other polls have his approval below 40 percent.
Look under the hood and Trump’s numbers are even weaker than those toplines indicate — and arguably weaker in key respects than his approval has ever been. This offers a major opportunity for Democrats.
More, the swiftness of Trump’s tanking popularity, even on his signature issues, indicates that Democrats who argued for fighting his agenda across the board were right, and those who advocated for quiescence and compromise were wrong.
Trump has quickly delegitimized himself and his movement (again). But he still has immense power to do harm. Democrats need to attack relentlessly. The numbers show that Trump can be wounded; resistance works. And as he weakens, we need more of it.
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Trump’s no good very bad polls
Trump’s overall numbers are terrible. But his numbers on key issues are perhaps even worse.
Trump’s approval on the economy has been among his strongest issues throughout his decade as a national political figure. He has generally been seen — erroneously but consistently — as a savvy businessman and dealmaker who is good for the stock market and jobs.
During the 2024 campaign, Trump benefited enormously from this image, which even overwrote people’s recollection of the covid downturn. A CBS News poll in March 2024, for example, found 65 percent of people believed the economy under Trump had been good, while only 38 percent believed it was good under Joe Biden.
Over the last three months, however, Trump has fired huge numbers of federal employees, implemented massive tariffs in the most chaotic manner possible, and ramped up thug-like immigration enforcement in a manner that has gutted the tourist industry.
Trump has effectively, and personally, pushed the US into what looks like a terrifying recession.
The American public is noticing. A CNBC poll found that Trump’s numbers on the economy were the worst of his entire presidential career. US consumer sentiment has plummeted; in April it dropped to 52.2, the fourth lowest level since 1952. Overall, in Morris’s aggregates, Trump’s net approval is -13.6 on the economy as a whole. It’s a shocking -21.5 on inflation — one of the issues he made a centerpiece of his 2024 campaign.
The news is similarly grim for Trump on immigration, another issue where he’s traditionally had strong numbers. According to Morris’s aggregate, Trump’s net approval on immigration went as high as +12 in February. But it’s now at -2.1.
A Washington Post poll underlines Trump’s weaknesses. Among independents, 56 percent disapprove of his handling of immigration, 62 percent disapprove of his efforts to deport foreign students, and 52 percent disapprove of his due process-free deportations to El Salvador.
Only 21 percent approve of his handling of the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a man the government deported to a gulag in El Salvador with no due process. The administration admits it sent Abrego Garcia there by mistake, but nevertheless refuses to return him despite a Supreme Court order.
Should the Democrats play dead? (Spoiler alert: No.)
Before the bottom fell out of Trump’s polling, many Democrats spent the early part of his term insisting he was too popular to fight, or that the best strategy was quiescence and compromise.
Democratic strategist James Carville advised the party to “play dead,” to offer no real resistance, and let Trump’s ugly policies become unpopular. Democrats in the Senate, especially, seemed keen to follow that advice.
Senators like Jeanne Shaheen, John Hickenlooper, Ruben Gallego, John Fetterman, Elissa Slotkin, Gary Peters, and more, have cast “yes” votes on almost half of Trump’s 21 cabinet appointments so far. Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer whipped votes to help Trump overcome a filibuster and pass a spending bill, jettisoning any possible Democratic leverage through a combination of unpreparedness and rank spinelessness.
Democrats have been especially eager to capitulate in advance on immigration, an issue where, again, Trump’s numbers have been strong in the past. Early in Trump’s term, Sens. John Fetterman and Ruben Gallego cosponsored the Laken Riley Act, a bigoted bill which allows detaining of immigrants who are even accused of a crime, stripping them of due process. Ten other Democrats ultimately voted for it.
Even as Trump’s immigration policies have moved quickly from horrible to apocalyptically dystopian, some Democrats and analysts have continued to try to avoid the issue by crawling, sluglike, on their bellies.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom called Abrego Garcia’s case a “distraction” when asked about it, and said he wanted to talk about Trump’s tariffs instead. Pollster Nate Silver agreed with Newsom’s feckless approach. He argued that Trump’s numbers on immigration were so strong that Democrats would be better attacking him on other issues; in focusing on Abrego Garcia, Silver said, Democrats were “picking the wrong fight.”
Even if polling is not on your side, there are obvious reasons to vigorously oppose the elimination of due process. Among other things, if Trump can arrest anyone he wants and ship them to El Salvador without trial, what’s to stop him from arresting Democratic candidates in close Senate races and simply disappearing them? Polling doesn’t matter much if you are living in an autocracy.
Beyond the practical considerations, though, we now know empirically that Newsom and Silver were simply wrong. Trump’s strength on immigration has disappeared.
There are a couple of possible interpretations of what happened to that advantage. One is that the general loathing of Trump has led to people hating all his policies. As G. Elliott Morris notes, “At the very least, the Dem messaging on Kilmer Abrego Garcia has not appeared to backfire on Dems.”
It’s also possible, though, that Democrats have helped push down Trump’s numbers on immigration by emphatically making the case that his policies are bad and dangerous. Sen. Chris Van Hollen’s principled trip to El Salvador to meet with Abrego Garcia led to a huge wave of media interest, almost all of it positive.
It seems plausible that Democrats found a way of highlighting the absolute worst aspects of Trump’s immigration policy, and that played a role in deflating his numbers on the issue across the board.
There’s probably no way to know for sure whether fighting helped lower Trump’s numbers. But one thing is clear: Fighting did not hurt, and now that Trump’s weakness is apparent, there’s all the more reason to fight more.
The less popular Trump is, the more the collective action problems that prevent opposition become surmountable. Many universities have located their spines and started working together to block his assault on education. Democratic senators and representatives, meanwhile, are demanding that law firms that capitulated to Trump provide them with details of the possibly illegal and unethical deals — a demand which has real teeth as it looks more likely that Democrats will win the House in 2026.
Carville, Silver, Newsom, and Schumer seem to believe that Democrats should follow public opinion rather than proactively working to change it. But given Trump’s full-blown attack on the Constitution, we don’t have time to wait for the next election. Nor, with Trump’s numbers in freefall, do we need to.
Trump is increasingly unpopular, and there’s every reason to believe that Democrats can attack him successfully even on areas where he not long ago seemed to be strong. This is, in fact, a chance to tie fascist politics — such as the targeting of immigrants and trans people — to a toxic presidency, and delegitimize those evil policies for years to come.
Trump’s presidency is a horrific nightmare, but there is an opportunity here to put the country on a better path. To get there, however, we have to fight.
That’s it for today
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For those of us who were not snookered in by the lies and false promises that Drump was peddling during the 2024 campaign (or any other time during his putrid life), the swift and total collapse of his polling numbers is an encouraging sign indeed. Of course, the mad king will attack (and possibly sue...ask the pollster in Iowa last year) the validity of the polling results or pull out the tired, unoriginal "fake news" card. I totally disagree with my fellow Louisianian James Carville's advice to just sit back and watch the carnage unfold. Rather, we need to heed the advice delivered in a rousing speech last night in New Hampshire by the governor of Illinois, J.B. Pritzker. Do yourself a favor and listen to or read the speech. We need more Dems (Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro immediately comes to mind) like him who will do the same. Like you said, Noah, the time to act is NOW. On les aura!
Everyone's crowing that Trump's numbers have "collapsed," but considering what's happening they're still appallingly good. We've got a big problem -- several big problems -- and they're not going away when Trump does.