Trump holds 52-percent approval rating after first month in office

President Trump holds a 52-percent approval rating in new polling after his first month back in the Oval Office. 

A Harvard CAPS/Harris poll found that 33 percent strongly approved of the president’s job performance, and 19 percent somewhat approved. Roughly 43 percent overall disapproved, with most expressing strong disapproval, and another 5 percent were undecided.

Trump’s numbers differed starkly across party lines, as around 9 in 10 Republicans approved of his handling and nearly 8 in 10 Democrats disapproved. Independents were almost exactly split.

“This is a good start for Trump though many of his policy initiatives are more popular [than] this,” Mark Penn, the co-director of the poll, said of Trump’s approval rating. 

“So Americans are taking a wait and see approach with Trump having the potential to climb higher, especially as 58 per cent believe he is doing a better job than [former President] Biden.”

Trump outperformed former Biden's January figures in voter perceptions of how either leader handled the economy, immigration, foreign affairs and administering the government — though the Republican only crossed the 50-point approval mark on immigration.

The poll tested 11 of Trump's policies and found all but one earned a majority of voter support. The outlier, with 39 percent support, was his move to rename the Gulf of Mexico as "the Gulf of America," and the top policy, with 81 percent support, was deportation of immigrants "who are here illegally and have committed crimes," per the poll's wording.

Roughly equal shares of respondents said that Trump is doing either better or worse than expected, at 36 and 35 percent, respectively. Another 29 percent said he was performing as expected.

A 54 percent majority also said the president’s actions will divide the country, rather than unite it. 

Trump’s first month back in the White House came with a barrage of executive action, contentious Cabinet picks and mass firings in the federal government. He’s moved to crack down on immigration, reign in funding, lean into culture wars and slash the size of the federal workforce.

The Trump administration has touted its action-packed month even as controversy builds, particularly over his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) commission and the involvement of tech billionaire Elon Musk in overhauling government agencies.

Voters in the poll were divided over Musk, who earned 44 percent each of favorable and unfavorable ratings. Trump was at 50 percent overall favorability, to 43 percent unfavorable.

The Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll survey was conducted from Feb. 19-20 among 2,443 registered voters. It is a collaboration of the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University and the Harris Poll. 

The margin of error for the entire sample was plus or minus 2 percentage points at a 95 percent confidence level.