Trump Approval Ratings Still Low After Speech to Congress

Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photo: Getty Images

One of the trends that Donald Trump and his supporters wanted to reverse with his big speech to a joint session of Congress on March 4 was a steady erosion of his job-approval ratings in the polls from the mildly positive “honeymoon” levels he registered just after returning to the White House. The FiveThirtyEight polling averages (the ones we’ve utilized here at New York for a good while for their superior comprehensiveness and sophistication) showed the president’s approval averages going “underwater” (registering a net negative) the very day of the speech. But as fate would have it, that very day, FiveThirtyEight was closed by its ABC/Disney owners as part of a wave of cost-cutting steps. (As a former contributor to FiveThirtyEight, this news made me sad for its current staff.)

As a result, it has taken a few days to get a sense of how Trump’s speech to Congress affected his popularity. On the one hand, snap polls from CBS and CNN after the speech showed very positive viewer assessments of his highly partisan remarks. On the other hand, the same polls showed that Trump was very much preaching to the choir because of the heavy Republican tilt of that viewership.

Now a week has gone by, and FiveThirtyEight founder Nate Silver has picked up his former site’s banner by publishing his own comprehensive and sophisticated polling averages at Silver Bulletin. He shows Trump’s approval-rating averages are still a bit underwater, at 47.9 percent positive and 48.0 percent negative. Even if you want to quibble over the exact numbers, it’s quite clear the president didn’t get any “bounce” from the speech to Congress. RealClearPolitics, which produces more simply arithmetical averages from a database that includes several dubious pro-Trump pollsters, shows his net job-approval averages dropping from 1.2 percent on March 4 to 0.3 percent on March 11.

Beyond the overall numbers, the most recent polls show that worries about the economy continue to hound the 47th president. Here’s how Emerson College explained the trends:

As President Trump reaches his first 50 days in office, his approval rating has declined from 49%-41% to 47%-45%, reflecting a nation deeply divided … Voters are most supportive of Trump’s immigration policy, but they disapprove of his handling of the economy, believe tariffs will hurt economic growth, and are skeptical of his cryptocurrency policy.

A number of polls before the speech suggested that even Trump supporters thought he was inadequately focused on inflation and prices, which could mean deeper trouble for him if his current wave of tariffs and trade-war threats produce higher retail prices, as most economists expect. The most recent plunge in stock prices may produce additional jitters as predictions of a possible recession return to news reports.

Where is Trump losing ground among the electorate? Polls differ, but the latest, the above-mentioned Emerson poll, showed Latinos disapproving of Trump’s job performance by a 51.6 to 35.2 percent margin. Another post-speech poll from TIPP Insights shows self-identified moderates disapproving of the job Trump’s doing by a 54 to 33 percent margin. It appears that the less MAGA-oriented elements of the electorate where Trump made important gains last November may be proving soft spots in his coalition, which isn’t surprising since he’s now responsible for a status quo with which a lot of Americans are chronically unhappy. The chaos in his administration probably isn’t helping. As Axios reports, the occasional pollsters who ask about Elon Musk and DOGE are sensing some negative vibes:

In a Feb. 13-18 Washington Post-Ipsos poll, a net 34% of respondents said they approved of how Musk was handling his job, compared to 49% disapproving and 14% not sure.

The poll displayed a stark divide based on party ID, with just 6% of Democrats approving of how Musk has handled his job compared to 70% of Republicans. But when asked if they approved of Musk shutting down federal government programs he deemed unnecessary, a smaller slice of Republicans (56%) gave their blessing, while 25% said they weren’t sure and 18% disapproved …

Over half of respondents (55%) in a Quinnipiac University poll conducted Feb. 13 to 17 said Musk has too much power in making decisions affecting the U.S., while 36% think he has about the right amount of power.

A Pew survey of U.S. adults taken Jan. 27 to Feb. 2 showed that Americans had more negative (54%) than positive (42%) views of Musk (DOGE’s dissection of the federal government has dramatically escalated since the poll was conducted).

If alarm over arbitrary federal budget cuts and employee layoffs coincides with troublesome economic news, Trump may soon find himself back in the more decisively negative public-opinion territory he has inhabited for much of his political career.