People

• Trump began his second term by matching a record-high 52% approval from March 2017, but voters soured on his job performance during the most disruptive part of his trade war, and he’s yet to return to a net positive approval rating.
• At a similar point in Trump’s first term, 42% of voters approved and 53% disapproved of his job performance, leaving his net approval rating better off today than it was at the same time in 2017.

• 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.) still face relatively low awareness from the electorate, though awareness about the top House Democrat improved a bit following his pushback against Trump’s legislative agenda.
• Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the most high-profile congressional  leader, is also the most unpopular one, though he’s maintained decent 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.
• As Trump works to reach foreign trade deals, just 21% say he should make the imposition of tariffs a “top priority.” At the same time, 48% think he is making tariffs a top priority, down 4 points over the prior week.

• The president receives his best ratings on national security and immigration (50% each). 
• Voters are divided evenly over Trump’s handling of the economy, while he gets his worst marks on health care, abortion and LGBTQ rights.

• Republicans hold sizable advantages over Democrats on trust to handle immigration, national security and the national debt.
• Voters are significantly more likely to trust Democrats to handle LGBTQ+ rights, abortion, Medicare and Social Security and health care. 
• Voters are closely divided over whom they trust to handle energy, foreign policy, taxes, the economy and trade.

News

• Voters are 19 points more likely to say they’ve heard something negative about Trump than positive, (49% to 31%), up from a second-term low of 24 points reached last month.
• Though Republicans enjoyed a narrow buzz advantage over Democrats between the November elections and the opening months of the second Trump presidency, the inverse has been true more often than not since late March.

• Voters are only 14 points more likely to hear something negative than positive about the economy, an improvement from net buzz ratings over the prior two weeks. 
• 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 in our latest survey.

• Epstein stories dominated headlines, and while Democrats and Republicans were almost equally likely to hear at least something about the case, voters in the president’s party were less likely to hear a lot about specific details.
• Few voters heard a lot about Trump’s trade agreement with Japan (17%), similar to the 16% who heard the same about the Trump administration’s mooted plan to end the Environmental Protection Agency's ability to fight climate change through regulations.