Nearly two weeks since his “Liberation Day” tariff announcements, President Donald Trump has roundly lost the majority of the American public’s support. According to polling, his chaotic trade policy has hammered trust in his economic stewardship, his economic approval ratings are tanking, and his overall popularity continues to slide.
The public’s perception that Trump has been unable to lower prices or slow down inflation is at the heart of that negative trajectory — and expectations that tariffs will only raise prices and hurt the national economy may only be accelerating that decline.
We’re getting more information on what effect this unpopularity is having on the country’s political landscape. Is it also dragging down his party’s standing with the multiracial coalition of voters they won over in 2024? And is that discontent causing those voters, particularly young voters and voters of color, to desert him?
We now have some more data to help us discern the answer. Trump’s economic approval and overall ratings have fallen: They’ve slid by 7 points since early March and by 6 points since early February, respectively.
But the Republican Party has now mostly erased an important Democratic advantage: When Quinnipiac University asked voters recently which party cares more for “the needs and problems of people like you,” Republicans and Democrats were effectively tied.
That’s a major break from history. For most of the last 20 years, Democrats have led on this question by double digits.
What does this have to do with tariffs? And is this closed gap the result of something Trump — and Republicans — are doing right? Or is it something Democrats are messing up?
The data paints a nuanced picture. While there are warning signs for Trump that tariffs might worsen his party’s standing with the public in general, there are also hints of resilient trust despite the chaos. Many still see Trump and the GOP as being the party better fitted to advocate for the working class. There’s also encouraging news for Democrats seeking to capitalize on the public’s economic discontent — and a warning for just how poor their standing with the electorate remains.
Here are three ways to view this data; together, they show the complexity of this moment.
Approach 1: Resilient trust in Trump
Campaigns, and how their winner ran their race, matter. Trump spent much of the 2024 cycle casting himself as the change candidate who would be able to get inflation under control, boost economic growth, and, specifically, return manufacturing jobs to the US. That pledge was what many post-election surveys of voters suggest got him elected.
And, it appears, a good number of Americans who voted for Trump still trust that he is trying to make good on that, or are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.
The overwhelming majority of Republicans still approve of Trump — 86 percent, according to Quinnipiac’s poll — while nearly 4 in 10 independents continue to support his job performance. That’s not too far off from the levels of support Trump got in November (he split independents’ votes evenly with Kamala Harris). That small difference in Republican and independent support from November to today suggests drastic defections aren’t happening yet.
At the same time, the full effects of his tariff and trade policy haven’t been felt yet. As tumultuous as the stock market’s performance has been over the last few weeks, it’s not the public’s top concern at this point: Just 17 percent of respondents say that the Dow’s performance is their top economic issue, compared to 47 percent who say so about the price of food and goods or the 20 percent who cite the cost of housing and rent.
And most importantly, there’s a mixed set of opinions on the effect of tariffs. In the short term, the Quinnipiac survey finds, voters overwhelmingly think that Trump’s tariffs will have a negative impact on the national economy.
But in the long term, opinions are more evenly split on the tariffs’ effects: 41 percent of voters think they’ll help the economy, compared to 53 percent who think they will hurt.
Comparing how Republicans and independents feel about tariffs in the short versus long term suggests that a good number of voters are buying Trump and his allies’ case for tariffs.
Republicans, for example, are split nearly evenly on whether tariffs will help or hurt in the short term. But they overwhelmingly think they will help in the long run. A similar dynamic is at play with independents: The share who think tariffs will help in the long run (35 percent) is nearly twice as large as the share who think they will help in the short term (19 percent).
Still, these opinions may change drastically if the economic fallout of an all-out trade war with China, sinking stocks, and a perplexing bond market ends up unfolding.
Approach 2: Trump-specific blame is distinct from the GOP brand
But what do “Trump’s tariffs” mean for the rest of the Republican Party?
The polling suggests that the public might be differentiating between Trump and his party. That is to say, blaming the president for economic conditions and unpopular policy decisions, while viewing the Republican Party’s brand much more positively, independent of what Trump is up to.
One of the side effects of Trump’s campaigning and 2024 victory was to help solidify the Republican Party’s association with the working class — and to hold the overwhelming support of non-college-educated voters since 2016.
The Quinnipiac poll asks about the Republican Party’s brand, and traditionally the question has been taken to represent which party is benefiting from populist, everyday citizen support — in other words, who has the support of the working-class majority of America?
CNN’s Harry Enten, who first flagged this shift in sentiment, contextualizes this through a breakdown in the Democratic vs Republican margin of support in polling from voters with and without college degrees. Since 2017, Democrats’ support among the non-college-educated voters has reversed. They went from having a seven-point advantage over the GOP to a 9-point deficit. Meanwhile, their support among college-educated voters has remained a steady 18-point edge.
And despite Trump’s overall unpopularity and falling support on a range of policy issues, on the generic congressional ballot, both parties are essentially tied. According to Enten’s analysis, Congressional Democrats currently hold a 1-point advantage in national polling, compared to a tied environment in November 2024, and a 7-point advantage at this point in 2017.
Trump’s unpopularity may continue to trickle down to the congressional and state level, but for now, voters seem to be thinking differently about Trump versus the two major parties.
Approach 3: Democrats have fumbled the ball
These Republican improvements also suggest Democratic failures, specifically with their branding with these voters. Digging into the polling again brings forth some other noteworthy dynamics: The tie in who the public sees as the party that better represents their interests is actually a three-way split. Thirty-three percent of voters say it’s the GOP, 33 percent say it’s the Democrats, and 31 percent say neither party. That 31 percent is primarily made up of disaffected independents (46 percent of independents feel like neither party represents them).
But there’s a significant share of self-identified Democrats who feel that way too: 22 percent, probably due to the party’s base feeling disillusioned and angry at their own party leaders for not doing more to resist or stand up to Trump and the GOP.
Contributing to this Democratic dissatisfaction is the party’s jumbled response to Trump’s tariffs and the week of chaotic developments. Elected Democrats found themselves scrambled as they tried to come up with a unified countermessage: Some endorsed tariffs, some criticized Trump for imposing tariffs on allies, some criticized Republicans for profiting off the stock market chaos, and some just remained silent.
Chief among the reasons for this splintering was the fact that the party is still trying to figure out how to reclaim the mantle of fighting for the working class, how to respond to Trump’s pitch on manufacturing jobs and protectionism, and how much to repudiate their neoliberal, free trade identity since the 1990s.
So while Trump is crashing his popularity and potentially stands to take down the Republican Party ahead of midterms, there’s not much Democrats are doing yet to take advantage of that spiral.
There’s still more to come
As Democrats figure out how and what to say to eventually exploit Trump’s spiral, they have some breathing room. Their gamble of letting Trump and the GOP take themselves down seems to be paying off: Trump is recording even more negative marks on the economy and trade with every passing week. The latest CBS/YouGov tracking poll found Trump’s approval reaching a new low for his second term: He’s 6 points underwater, a steady slide since early February. And more than half the nation thinks the economy is getting worse, up 11 points from November 2024.
So Democrats have some reason for hope. The president’s sliding popularity suggests that his Biden-era gains among economic-focused voters may be short-lived.
Another high-quality poll, from Echelon Insights, found signs that congressional Democrats are making progress on other economic issues. Republicans have traditionally enjoyed a large advantage among voters asked which party can be trusted with “jobs and the economy” or “inflation and the cost of living.” Now, the GOP and Democrats are essentially tied.
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