Kristen Soltis Anderson, Trump’s Poll Numbers Are Sagging. Here’s the Key Reason. NYTimes, Mar. 17, 2025.
I don't think anyone, apart from Trump insiders, expected Trump to attempt to do so much so fast. Consequently, "his poll numbers on the economy have begun to sag and his job approval ratings are upside-down." As Anderson puts it: "Did people want him to remake the government and disrupt the global financial order, or did they just want cheaper groceries?"
Mr. Trump seems to view his job differently than many voters, which is one reason for his falling poll numbers. He strongly believes that he was elected to return to Washington as a disrupter, this time with significantly more experience and effectiveness than in his first term. He sees himself as bringing strength back to the Oval Office after four years of a weak Joe Biden. In this, he believes he has the latitude to go big and bold, to create some turbulence and cause some prices to rise in the short term as he asserts himself in Washington and around the globe. All of this, Mr. Trump says, is in hopes of establishing a stronger American position over the long term.
But as I dug into Mr. Trump’s polling data, it looked increasingly that American voters’ mandate to the president was more narrow than he sees it. After a prolonged period of inflation, with a Biden administration that told Americans not to believe their lying wallets, voters clearly wanted the next president to stabilize the economy and make their cost of living more manageable.
Going on:
Presidents have misread their mandates in the past, seeing what they want to see rather than what the voters have plainly told them. The best argument for Mr. Trump’s belief that he was elected with a broad mandate to bring about aggressive change is that he never pretended he’d do otherwise.
Election polls showed that Americans wanted a president who had the ability to lead and create big change. [...]
Voters had plenty of foreknowledge of what Mr. Trump might do in a second term, and they voted for him anyway. Significantly increasing deportation or changing the government’s approach to transgender rights may not have been tip-top priorities for all swing voters, but Mr. Trump was clear what he would do on these fronts, and it is notable that at least some of his moves in these areas remain fairly popular. Even on the economy, Mr. Trump’s actions are most likely not that surprising to voters on some level. My polling showed that over 80 percent of voters believed that he would impose new tariffs as president, far higher than many other policies that Mr. Trump has pursued.
But even if Americans knew what they were getting with things like tariffs, that still doesn’t answer whether they voted for him because of those things, or in spite of those things. Even if Republicans have been clamoring to shrink government for decades, tariffs have not long been high on their wish list. And there is increasing evidence in public opinion data that Americans are growing impatient to get the primary thing they feel they were promised: a more stable economy where the cost of living is more affordable.
There's more at the link.
