People

• Trump began his second term by matching a record-high 52% approval from March 2017, but voters have steadily soured on his job performance since his second inauguration.
• At a similar point in Trump’s first term, 51% of voters approved and 45% disapproved of his job performance.

• Trump’s favorability ratings remain underwater, which has been the case more often than not since he took office. 
• Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) face low awareness from the electorate.
• Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the most famous congressional leader, is also the most unpopular one, with 2 in 5 voters expressing unfavorable views. Despite pushback from the left nationally, he’s maintained good numbers at home in New York.

Policy

• Voters are most likely to want Trump to focus on lowering prices for goods and services, and specifically health care affordability, following a campaign that was dominated by voters’ concerns about inflation.
• Amid his and Elon Musk’s high-profile efforts with the Department of Government Efficiency, just 29% of voters say that a reduction in the size and scope of the U.S. government should be a “top priority,” while 44% said it is for Trump.

• The president receives his best ratings on immigration (52%) and national security (50%). 
• Nearly half of voters disapprove of Trump’s economic and trade handling, making them his worst issues.

• Republicans hold advantages over Democrats on trust to handle the immigration, national security.
• Voters are much more likely to trust Democrats to handle health care, LGBTQ+ rights, abortion, the major U.S. entitlement programs and energy.
• Voters are closely divided over whom they trust to handle the economy, taxes, trade and foreign policy.

News

• Voters remain 23 points more likely to say they’ve heard something negative about Trump than positive, tied for the worst net buzz rating we’ve measured during his second term in office.
• Few voters say they’ve heard much about Johnson or Thune as the two work with Trump to plot his legislative strategy.
• Though Republicans enjoyed a narrow buzz advantage over Democrats between the November elections and the opening months of the second Trump presidency, that hasn’t been the case since late March.

• Voters were 29 points more likely to hear something negative than positive about the economy as the markets continued to react to Trump’s tariffs, nearing a second-term low set two weeks ago.
• Following Trump’s inauguration, Republican voters are increasingly likely to say that they’re hearing positive things about issues such as the immigration, national security and public safety.
• As was the case throughout much of the 2024 campaign, immigration has been one of the most salient issues voters are hearing about in the news, with roughly 7 in 10 saying they'd heard something recently about it.

• Roughly 2 in 5 voters (37%) said they had recently seen, read or heard “a lot” about the Trump administration's refusal to seek the return of Abrego Garcia from a prison in El Salvador, making it the most salient news item we tested last week.
• Relatively few voters (16%) said they heard a lot about former President Joe Biden’s public re-emergence to attack the Trump administration's approach to Social Security during his first post-presidency speech, matching the sliver of the electorate who heard the same about California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s lawsuit against the Trump administration challenging its authority to impose tariffs without approval by Congress.