By STEVE PEOPLES, MIKE CATALINI, JESSE BEDAYN and AMELIA THOMSON-DEVEAUX, Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — Nearly a year into his second term, President Donald Trump’s work on the economy hasn’t lived up to the expectations of many people in his own party, according to a new AP-NORC survey.
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The poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds a significant gap between the economic leadership Americans remembered from Trump’s first term and what they’ve gotten so far as he creates a stunning level of turmoil at home and abroad.
Just 16% of Republicans say Trump has helped “a lot” in addressing the cost of living, down from 49% in April 2024, when an AP-NORC poll asked Americans the same question about his first term.
At the same time, Republicans are overwhelmingly supportive of the president’s leadership on immigration — even if some don’t like his tactics.
John Candela, 64, who lives in New Rochelle, New York, said the cost of living hasn’t improved for his family — his salary and bills remain the same as before.
“Still paying $5 for Oreos,” he said. But he’s willing to be patient: “I would expect it to be different by the time his four years are up.”
The poll reveals signs of weakness among consumers on the economy, especially Trump’s core campaign promise to reduce costs. Inflation has cooled somewhat, but prices on many goods are higher than they were when the Republican president took office last January.
There is little sign overall, though, that the Republican base is abandoning Trump. The vast majority of Republicans, about 8 in 10, approve of his job performance, compared with 4 in 10 for adults overall.
“I don’t like the man as a human being. I don’t like his brashness. I don’t like his roughness. I don’t like how he types out his texts all capital as if he’s yelling at everybody. But what I approve of is what he is doing to try and get the country on track,” Candela said.
Trump not improving costs, most Republicans say
On various economic factors, Trump has yet to convince many of his supporters that he’s changing things for the better.
Only about 4 in 10 Republicans overall say Trump has helped address the cost of living at least “a little” in his second term, while 79% said he helped address the issue that much in his first term, based on the 2024 poll. Just over half of Republicans in the new poll say Trump has helped create jobs in his second term; 85% said the same about his first term, including 62% who said he helped “a lot.”
Only 26% of Republicans in the January survey say he’s helped “a lot” on job creation in his second term.
And on health care, about one-third of Republicans say Trump has helped address costs at least “a little,” while 53% in the April 2024 poll said he helped reduce health care costs that much during his first term. Federal health care subsidies for more than 20 million Americans expired on Jan. 1, resulting in health care costs doubling or even tripling for many families.
In the town of Waxahachie, Texas, south of Dallas, 28-year-old three-time Trump voter Ryan James Hughes, a children’s pastor, doesn’t see an improvement in his family’s financial situation. He said the medical bills haven’t declined.
But, he said, “I’m not looking to the government to secure my financial future.”
Immigration is a strength among the Trump base despite controversy
The new poll underscores that Republicans are largely getting what they want on immigration, even as some report concerns about the federal immigration agents who have flooded U.S. cities at Trump’s direction.
About 8 in 10 Republicans say Trump has helped at least “a little” on immigration and border security in his second term. That’s similar to the share in the April 2024 poll that saw a positive effect from Trump’s leadership on immigration and border security during his first term.
Most Republicans say Trump has struck the right balance when it comes to deporting immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally, and about one-third think he hasn’t gone far enough.
But Trump’s approval on immigration has also slipped among Republicans over the past year, falling from 88% in March to 76% in the new poll.
Kevin Kellenbarger, 69, a three-time Trump voter who retired from a printing company, said his Christian faith led him to the Republican Party. The Lancaster, Ohio, resident thinks the president’s immigration crackdown is necessary, though he expressed dissatisfaction at the recent killing of Renee Good by a federal immigration agent in Minneapolis.
“I don’t like anybody getting killed, but it wasn’t Trump’s fault,” Kellenbarger said, adding that President Joe Biden, a Democrat, “let millions of people in. They have to be taken out.”
Several Republicans said in interviews they thought the aggressive tactics seen recently in Minneapolis went too far, suggesting that Trump should focus more on immigrants with criminal backgrounds as he promised during the campaign.
Overall, just 38% of U.S. adults approve of Trump’s leadership on immigration, while 61% disapprove.
“These families that are being separated and they’re just here to try to live the American dream,” said Republican Liz Gonzalez, 40, the daughter of Mexican immigrants and a self-employed rancher and farmer from Palestine, Texas.
At the same time, Gonzalez said, she doesn’t think people opposed to the crackdown should be interfering at all. “I think if they just let (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), you know, like the patrol people, do their jobs, then they would see it’s not — it doesn’t have to be chaos,” she said.
More Republicans see the country improving than their personal lives
About two-thirds of Republicans say the country as a whole is “much” or “somewhat” better off than before Trump took office, but only about half say this about themselves and their family.
The broad sense that the country is moving in the right direction may be counteracting Republican dissatisfaction with the state of the economy.
Phyllis Gilpin, a 62-year-old Republican from Booneville, Missouri, praised Trump’s ability to “really listen to people.” But she doesn’t love his personality.
“He is very arrogant,” she said, expressing frustration about his name-calling. But she said the divisive politics go both ways: “I really, honestly, just wish that we could all just not be Democrat or Republican — just come together.”
The AP-NORC poll of 1,203 adults was conducted Jan. 8-11 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 3.9 percentage points. The poll included interviews with 404 Republicans, and the margin of sampling error for Republicans overall is plus or minus 6 percentage points.
