About 47% of Americans approved of Donald Trump’s government when he returned to the White House this week, a sign of a polarized nation after the Republican’s victory in November, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll concluded on Tuesday.
The two-day poll, conducted in the hours following President Trump’s inauguration on Monday, showed his popularity is higher than it was during most of his 2017-2021 term.
But the poll also showed that Americans were already soured on some of his early moves — 58% of respondents said Trump should not pardon every person convicted of crimes during the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Trump essentially did just that — pardoning most of the nearly 1,600 people accused of taking part in the attack, while ending the sentences of 14 leaders of the attack — hours into his second term, while the poll was being conducted.
Only 29% of respondents approved of the way Trump was dealing with the perceived politicization of the justice system. Trump accused his predecessor, Joe Biden, of distorting the balance of justice with lawsuits aimed at preventing Trump from returning to office, accusations that the Democrat denies. He also said he may use the court system to seek retribution against his political rivals.
Respondents viewed Trump’s approach on other issues more favorably. About 46% of those surveyed approved of his work in dealing with immigration, an issue that many Americans would like to see as the new administration’s top priority.
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The poll finds that 58% agreed with a statement that the United States should “dramatically reduce the number of migrants allowed to seek asylum at the border,” signaling apparent support for Trump’s initial actions in office to suspend a procedure that allows asylum applications. asylum at the US border. Trump also declared illegal immigration a national emergency and took steps to restrict citizenship to children born on U.S. soil.
Trump won the 2024 election by defeating Democrat Kamala Harris by 312 to 226 votes in the US Electoral College, although he won just 49.8% of the national popular vote to Kamala’s 48.3%.
The poll results represent a reset of sorts for Trump, who began his first presidential term with a 43% approval rating — a number that rose to 49% in late January 2017 — but ended with a 34% approval rating for his performance after the attack on the Capitol, an attempt to reverse his defeat in the 2020 elections.
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Trump’s initial approval rating was low by historical standards, said Jacob Rubashkin, a political analyst at Inside Elections. US presidents typically begin their terms with approval ratings above 50%.
“Yes, it’s positive for Trump, but it’s more or less in line with what we saw in his first term — a historically low approval rating at the beginning of a presidency,” Rubashkin said.
Like Biden, who left office on Monday, Trump’s popularity was below 45% for most of his first term, falling to 33% in December 2017.
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Both leaders have persistently failed to win the approval of people outside their parties, and in the latest poll, 91% of Republicans approved of Trump’s leadership and 84% of Democrats rejected it.
Biden began his presidency with a 55% approval rating, but the rating quickly dropped. It reached 35% on the eve of the November election, with the Democrat’s unpopularity widely seen as a boost to Trump’s election campaign.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll, which was conducted online, interviewed 1,077 US adults and had a margin of error of about plus or minus 4 percentage points.
