Survey Says is a weekly column rounding up three of the most important polling trends or data points you need to know about. You’ll also find data-based updates on past Daily Kos reporting, plus a vibe check on a trend that’s driving politics.
Donald Trump: Master of stonks
President Donald Trump is giving it his all—if by “it” we mean “wrecking the stock market and/or economy.” Despite a rally on Friday, the S&P 500 has tumbled 410 points and the Dow Jones Industrial Average has plummeted 2,537 points since Trump took office. And that pain springs from his nonsensical, reactionary tariff policywhich he is both backing off of and doubling down on at random.
And Americans are not happy.
A new poll from SSRS conducted for CNN finds Trump with his lowest net approval rating on the economy ever. Just 44% of Americans approve of how he’s handling the economy, while 56% disapprove. That puts him 12 percentage points underwater.
His worst result before this in the poll? Five points underwater, in December 2017.
Worse for Trump, this survey was finished fielding last Sunday, meaning it was conducted before this past week’s stock sell-off. And Americans are largely aware of that market chaos: 41% correctly say stock prices have generally fallen since Trump took office, according to a YouGov poll fielded on Tuesday, amid the sell-off. Another 22% say it’s about the same (wrong), while 15% say it’s higher (wrong-er). But many of those folks might’ve had their minds changed since Tuesday.
Naturally, Trump and his lackeys are blaming former President Joe Biden for the mess they created. And it is true that only 44% of Americans think Trump is more responsible than Biden for the state of the economy, while 34% blame Biden, according to a fresh YouGov poll for The Economist. However, that number will get worse for Trump the longer he is in office and pursuing this destructive trade war.
After all, nearly one-half of registered voters (46%) think Trump’s economic policies are hurting the economy, according to a new Emerson College poll largely fielded before the stock sell-off. That includes 81% of Democrats, 44% of independents, and 15% of Republicans. A mere 28% of voters think his policies are making the economy better, including just 55% of Republicans.
Another bad number for Trump? About 1 in 4 Republicans in Emerson’s poll think his tariff policies will hurt the U.S. economy, a view also held by 4 in 5 Democrats and more than 1 in 2 independents.
Given that Democrats’ and Republicans’ feelings about the economy tend to swing abruptly depending on who’s in the White House, those are pretty weak showings for Trump.
That said, while the Dow may be down 2,537 points, you can’t blame Trump. He’s been golfing a lot lately. He must think a negative number is a good one.
Don’t rain on schools. Make it rain.
The Republican Party’s approach on public education goes like this: Drain money from schoolsthen claim they don’t work wellthen use that to justify draining more money from them. Really, that’s the GOP’s whole governing philosophy, but public education seems to catch it especially hard.
However, the public wants the government to dump funding into education, not gut it.
A new YouGov poll for The Economist finds that a majority of Americans want the federal government to spend more on low-income schools (57%), special education (52%), vocational and career training (57%), school safety (60%), teacher training (56%), and early childhood education (52%). Furthermore, a minuscule share—we’re talking almost always single digits—wants to decrease or totally eliminate funding to each of those.
The least popular funding area is college financial support, though a plurality of Americans (38%) still wants to see its funding increased and another 27% want it to stay the same.
The vast majority of Republicans don’t want to see most education funding cut, either. Excluding college financial support, the areas they most want to see the government cut back on are teacher training and early childhood education. However, only 8% of Republicans want to see funding to those decreased, while another 8% want the government to end all funding for early childhood education and 9% want to end all federal funding for teacher training.
The same poll finds little support for arguably Trump’s largest education plan: killing the Department of Education. If carried out, that move could imperil federal funding for public K-12 schools, especially funding for poor and disabled students. It would also lead to chaos in federal student loans, Pell Grants, and college accreditation, among many other areas.
That could be why only 29% in the poll support eliminating the DOE—a figure that gets slashed nearly in half (17%) when you look at those who “strongly” support doing so.
Even Republicans seem to know you don’t get a better public education system by spending less money.
Why you gotta be so rude?
You see it every day now, online or in real life: people screaming at strangers in Target or throwing drinks at drive-through workers or just staring at their illuminated phone screens in dark movie theaters—behaviors that used to be gauche, to say the least. If it feels to you like society is more crass these days, you’re far from alone.
Almost half of Americans (47%) think people are ruder in public than they were before the COVID-19 pandemicaccording to Pew Research Center. That’s higher than the share who thinks the level of public rudeness is about the same (44%).
A third of Americans see people acting rudely in public often (25%) or almost always (9%), while 46% say it happens only sometimes.
What constitutes rudeness? Well, Pew finds that roughly 3 in 4 Americans think it’s rarely or never acceptable to smoke near other people or take a photo or video of someone without asking their permission. Other types of hugely unacceptable behavior include bringing a kid to a bar or another place typically meant for adults (69%), displaying cuss words on a sign or article of clothing (66%), and cussing out loud (65%).
That said, Americans are pretty split on whether it’s okay to bring a pet into a grocery store or shop, with 45% finding it never or rarely acceptable and 40% saying it’s sometimes acceptable.
The oddest finding in the data, though, is that roughly 1 in 10 Americans think people have gotten more polite since the pandemic. And honestly, given the hellscape we live in, it’s pretty rude of them to say that.
Any updates?
Trump and Vice President JD Vance ambushed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Late February, mocking a man whose country is under invasion. But Americans largely aren’t buying the GOP’s spin on the encounter: Only 32% say Zelenskyy disrespected Trump, while 51% say Trump disrespected Zelenskyy, according to a poll from YouGov for The Economist.
As this column covered two weeks agowhile voters may largely support the idea of “mass deportations,” they’re far less likely to support deporting people after learning anything about their lives. And a new poll from Data for Progress backs that up further, finding that only about 1 in 4 likely voters would deport undocumented migrants who are in various high-paying jobs or who are in lower-wage jobs but have been in the country for a long time.
Vibe check
Before last year’s election, Republicans voters’ outlook on the economy was extremely negative, with 83% saying it was getting worse, 11% saying it was about the same, and just 5% saying it was getting better, according to Civiqs. Then the election happened, and by early February, those numbers had mostly flipped—57% said it was getting betterwhile 25% said it was staying the same and 12% said it was getting worse.
In a troubling sign for Trump, though, that “getting better” number seems to have plateaued since early February. Given that the data doesn’t incorporate much of the chaos of the past week, this is a number to keep an eye on.
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