(CNN) — Americans are not impressed with President Donald Trump’s stewardship of the economy, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS, putting him underwater on the nation’s top issue even as he sees ratings among the best of his presidential career on other key priorities.
As markets slide and investors worry in response to Trump’s trade policies, a 56% majority of the public disapproves of his handling of the economy, worse than at any point during his first term in office. By contrast, the 51% who now say they approve of his work on immigration – headlined by stricter enforcement efforts – is 7 points higher than at any point during his first term.
Americans are closely divided over Trump’s performance so far in handling the federal budget and managing the federal government – 48% approve on each, with about half disapproving – while giving him lower ratings for his work on health care policy (43%), foreign affairs (42%) and tariffs (39%).
Trump’s overall job approval rating currently stands at 45%, with 54% disapproving, in line with the numbers he saw in March 2017 and matching his highest ratings for his first term in office. Overall, 35% of Americans say things in the country are going well, a rise from 29% in January, reflecting a surge in positive sentiment within the GOP. His ratings remain highly polarized, with Republicans roughly 10 times as likely as Democrats to approve of his job performance.
There’s overwhelming agreement across party lines that Trump’s use of presidential power reflects a break from historical precedent. An 86% majority of Americans, including more than three-quarters of adults in each party, say that Trump is taking a completely different approach to presidential power in comparison to past presidents, with 49% calling this a bad thing and 37% saying it’s a good thing. Just 14% say his approach to his second term has been generally in line with past presidents’.
Economic concerns continue to dominate, the poll finds, with 42% of Americans choosing the economy as their top issue from a list of seven – more than doubling the share who picked any other issue, including the state of US democracy (19%), the way the federal government works (14%), immigration (12%), health care (6%), foreign policy (3%) or climate change (2%).
The economy is also the issue with the most resonance across party lines, narrowly landing behind concerns about democracy among Democratic adults (36% choose the state of US democracy, 33% the economy), and dominating the issue landscape among Republicans and independents (45% in each group choose the economy).
Perceptions of Trump as able to bring the change the country needs (50%) and manage the government effectively (49%) are significantly higher than they were during the latter half of Trump’s first term (43% and 42%, respectively, in November 2019). Roughly half of Americans currently say that Trump has the stamina and sharpness to serve effectively (51%), with fewer calling him an effective world leader (46%) or saying he respects the rule of law (38%).
Worries about Musk’s role, government cuts
Trump has spent his first months back in office seeking to sharply cut spending and reduce the federal workforce. The public’s views of that effort and Elon Musk, to whom Trump has given a prominent role, are largely negative.
Just 35% of Americans express a positive view of Musk, with 53% rating him negatively and 11% offering no opinion – making him both better known and more substantially unpopular than Vice President JD Vance (whom 33% of Americans rate favorably and 44% unfavorably, with 23% having no opinion.) Roughly 6 in 10 Americans say that Musk has neither the right experience nor the right judgment to make changes to the way the government works. There is uneasiness about Musk even among some of the president’s supporters: 28% of those who see Trump’s changes to the government as necessary doubt the tech billionaire has the judgment to carry them out.
A 55% majority of Americans say that the Trump administration’s changes to the federal government are being made largely to advance his agenda, with 45% calling the changes necessary to ensure the government functions properly.
Asked to weigh whether they’re more concerned about the Trump administration’s cuts to the federal government going too far or not far enough, 62% of Americans say they’re more worried about the former and fear important programs being shut down. The other 37% say they’re more worried about the cuts not going far enough in eliminating fraud and waste in the federal government. Nine in 10 Democrats and 69% of independents say they’re more concerned about losing important federal programs, while 73% of Republicans say they’re more concerned that fraud and waste will remain an issue in the government.
Lingering doubts since first term
Some opinions of Trump’s second presidency echo dynamics seen throughout his political career. The shares who describe Trump as caring about people like them (40%) or being able to unite the country (34%) remain about as negative as they were in 2019. During his first term, the share who strongly disapproved of his performance as president consistently outstripped the share who strongly approved; in the latest survey, those numbers stand at 41% and 26%, respectively.
He has never been seen by a majority of Americans as having the right presidential priorities, and in the latest survey, 57% say he hasn’t paid attention to the country’s most important problems. The 59% of US adults who currently call Trump’s views and policies too extreme marks a modest uptick from the 54% majority of registered voters who said the same last September, shortly before he was reelected to the White House.
Significant shares of the public express some degree of mixed views about Trump’s policies or his qualities as a leader: 12%, for instance, say they approve of his handling of immigration but disapprove of his work on the economy; 15% say both that Trump does not respect the rule of law and that he can bring the kind of change the country needs.
The CNN poll was conducted by SSRS from March 6-9 among a random national sample of 1,206 US adults drawn from a probability-based panel. Surveys were either conducted online or by telephone with a live interviewer. Results among all adults have a margin of sampling error of ±3.3 percentage points.
CNN’s Jennifer Agiesta and Edward Wu contributed to this report.
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