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, 45% of voters approved and 52% disapproved of his job performance, leaving his net approval rating in a similar place to where it was around this time eight years ago.

• 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, health care and energy following a campaign that was dominated by voters’ concerns about inflation.
• However, not nearly as many Americans see Trump placing those priorities at the top of his list.

• In terms of his handling of specific policy areas, the president receives his best approval ratings on immigration (51%) and national security (50%).
• His highest disapproval ratings from voters come on health care and the economy (51% each).

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

News

• Voters are 20 points more likely to say they’ve heard something negative about Trump than positive over the past week, marking a worsening in buzz since earlier this month.
• Though Republicans in Congress enjoyed a narrow buzz advantage over congressional 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 23 points more likely to have heard something negative than positive about the economy, worse than what they heard last week as buzz about trade worsened a bit, too.
• 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.

• Three in 4 voters said they had seen, read or heard “a lot” or “some” about Jimmy Kimmel's Sep. 23 return to his late-night television show, nearly matching the share who said the same about Trump’s warning that pregnant women should not take Tylenol due to its potential to cause autism.
• Three in 5 voters said they’d heard about Trump’s executive order that will allow the completion of a deal to sell TikTok's U.S. assets to an investment group made up mostly of Americans. Despite the platform’s youthful user base, Gen Z voters were less likely than Baby Boomers to report hearing the news (53% to 66%).