April 15, 2025, 3:05 p.m.
Remember when some days, like weekends, had less going on and you could have a life without missing significant political news? Yeah, that ended with President Trump’s reelection. There are zero days when one can tune out and not miss some sort of major development.
I was at a wedding for much of Sunday. While I was offline, the trade war with China escalated about three times, and the dispute deepened between the Trump administration and the court system over an illegal immigrant who was (by the administration’s own admission) mistakenly deported to El Salvador.
Most voters don’t keep up with politics the way I do, since I do it for a living. But they are paying attention. It’s clear in survey data and focus groups that people are aware of how the big issues are playing out, and anecdotally, the non-political people in my life are more aware than they have been in the past.
Still, the likelihood that most voters are following every development in Trump’s manufactured trade war or in deportation court battles is next to zero. There is simply too much happening on any given day. That means we aren’t seeing the full impact of Trump’s actions in the polls, but people do have an inkling of what could be coming in the trade war. And while Trump’s immigration policies are broadly popular, he risks overplaying his hand with more extreme measures, like deporting people without allowing due process.
Jitters about Trump going to the most extreme versions of his policies might be behind this weekend’s CBS News-YouGov poll, which had a lot of bad news for Trump on the economic front. This poll had been quite good for Trump as recently as a month ago. Now, though, his job-approval rating has slid by 6 points since February, from 53 percent to 47 percent.
In the same poll, Trump’s economic approval rating has slid 7 points since early March, from 51 percent to 44 percent. In March, 42 percent said Trump’s policies were making them worse off financially; now that is 49 percent. And a similar decline on how well he’s handling inflation results in only a 40 percent approval rating on that issue.
Most voters seem to have adopted Trump’s stance that tariffs mean pain in the short term for long-term gain. Ask Democrats how well campaigning on long-term economic policies worked for them in 2024. For now, while 75 percent of voters think Trump’s tariffs will increase prices in the short term, that drops to 48 percent in the long term.
Republicans’ opinions matter most on this issue, as I wrote last week. With Trump set on his pathway, the check on his policies would come from the Republican majorities in Congress. Among Republicans, 66 percent expect short-term increases, but only 15 percent expect the pain to last.
But what do they mean by long-term, and will that matter in 2026? Political time is typically very short. Voters have short memories, and events well over a year before the election tend not to have much impact on outcomes—although you can bet Democratic campaigns will do their best to remind voters of the chaos happening now even if it doesn’t last.
It’s also one thing for Republicans to say now that they expect the pain to be short-lived and support Trump’s long-term plan. It’s quite something else for them to remain supportive if (or when) the short-term pain kicks in.
Immigration is still Trump’s strongest issue. But that’s not saying a lot—his approval rating on that issue is 50-50, according to the CBS-YouGov poll, down slightly from 53 percent approval in March and 54 percent in February. Ninety percent of Republicans still approve of Trump on immigration, so it looks like there is less risk of a revolt on this issue.
But a different survey from YouGov has worse news when it comes to Trump’s latest moves: Only 26 percent of Americans support “deporting immigrants without criminal convictions to El Salvador to be imprisoned, without letting them challenge the deportation in court.” Support jumps to 52 percent among Republicans but is a paltry 21 percent among independents. The question wording notably does not include the specification that these immigrants were in the country illegally, which could shift the numbers.
Trump was elected to fix the economy and the immigration system, and his moves are dramatically remaking the world economic order and immigration policy. While voters have shown some willingness to see what Trump does, the slipping numbers show that it’s wearing out. Trump has already lost the clear majority support he enjoyed a month ago. He’s at real risk of pushing too far.
Contributing editor Natalie Jackson is a vice president at GQR Research.
