Voters see Trump’s use of power as overreaching, Times/Siena Poll finds
Voters believe President Donald Trump is overreaching with his aggressive efforts to expand executive power, and they have deep doubts about some of the signature pieces of his agenda, a New York Times/Siena College poll found.
The turbulent early months of Trump’s administration are seen as “chaotic” and “scary” by majorities of voters -- even many who approve of the job he is doing. Voters do not view him as understanding the problems in their daily lives and have soured on his leadership as he approaches his 100th day in office.
Trump’s approval rating sits at 42%. His standing is historically low for a president this early in a term, but it is in line with his stubborn unpopularity, which did not prevent him from sweeping the battleground states in last year’s election.
Now, however, voters express dimming confidence about Trump’s handling of some of the top issues that propelled him back to the White House, including the economy and immigration, even as most Americans support deportations. Only 43% said they approved of how he has managed the economy this term, a serious erosion on an issue long seen as a strength.
The president’s pursuit of widespread tariffs -- which has caused stock-market drops and gyrations -- was opposed by 55% of voters, including 63% of independents.
Taken together, the survey’s findings show that any second-term honeymoon for Trump is over. His approval rating among crucial independent voters is now at a woeful 29%.
Voters said he had “gone too far” on issue after issue -- his tariffs, his immigration enforcement, his cuts to the federal workforce. Broad numbers of independent voters sided with Democrats in believing that he had overreached.
Overall, a 54% majority said that Trump was “exceeding the powers available to him,” including 16% of Republicans and 62% of independent voters.
Douglas Williams, 56, a cattle rancher and banker in rural Missouri who voted for Trump in each of the last three elections, still supports much of his agenda. But he worries that the president is “pushing the envelope” with some of his executive orders.
“Now, do I agree with the goal? Do I agree with the result? Probably,” Williams said. “But I am constitutionalist enough to at least be a little bit concerned about how far we push that.”
For some of Trump’s supporters, the chaos and his refusal to follow norms are part of his appeal, if not the point.
Among those who approve of Trump, nearly half still saw the recent months as chaotic. About 40% of Republican voters said that presidents should be able to do what they think is best -- even if that might go outside existing rules. And 8% of voters who approved of Trump said his actions were “a unique threat to our system of government.”
“Sometimes you have to break the rules,” said Michael Craig, 63, a retired Republican from outside Germantown Hills, Illinois.
Still, voters overall are questioning not just Trump’s methods, but also his policy agenda.
About half of voters -- and about 60% of independents -- said they disapproved of Trump’s handling of trade with other countries; the federal workforce; the war between Russia and Ukraine; and the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a migrant in Maryland who was mistakenly deported to a prison in El Salvador as part of Trump’s immigration crackdown.
On foreign affairs, 68% of voters said the country mostly benefited from alliances and trade, while only 24% said the country was mostly harmed by them.
And more voters said they opposed Trump’s executive orders rolling back diversity, equity and inclusion programs in the federal government than supported them -- even as the DEI issue has pushed Democrats into a defensive crouch.
Voters do not seem to believe Trump empathizes with their struggles. After spending much of last year promising to immediately lower prices, he and his allies have urged patience and tried to brace the country for short-term economic pain.
Only 44% of voters -- including a meager 31% of independents -- said that he “understands the problems facing people like you.”
Broad majorities said they would prefer to place limits on exactly the kinds of powers that Trump has tried to exercise:
▪ 61% of voters, including 33% of Republicans, said a president should not be able to impose tariffs without authorization from Congress.
▪ 54%, including 26% of Republicans, said a president should not be able to eliminate programs enacted by Congress.
▪ 63%, including 40% of Republicans, said a president should not be able to deport legal immigrants who have protested Israel.
▪ 73% of voters, including 56% of Republicans, said a president should not be able to send American citizens to prison in El Salvador, as Trump has threatened to do
▪ And as Trump’s administration has veered toward open defiance of court orders, a sky-high 76% of voters, and 61% of Republicans, said a president should not be able to ignore the Supreme Court.
Overall, 54% of voters said Trump’s changes to the country’s political and economic systems had “gone too far,” with 63% of independent voters feeling that way.
And 50% of voters said the upheaval he had brought to the nation’s political and economic systems was a “bad thing.” Only 36% said the changes were good.
One of the most troubling numbers for Trump is the share of voters who believe his policies have hurt them personally.
Voters are more than twice as likely to say his policies have hurt them than helped them. That is a reversal from last fall, when many voters across demographic groups said his policies during his first term had helped them.
Trust in Trump on the economy was a key ingredient in his 2024 victory. A Times/Siena poll one year ago showed that 64% of voters fondly remembered how he had handled the economy as president. Yet now only 43% of voters gave him positive marks on the issue for the start of this term.
Voters remain deeply unhappy with the economy, even if they are divided over whom to blame.
Despite Trump’s short tenure, equal numbers of voters believe he is responsible for the economic conditions they face as those who see former President Joe Biden as accountable. A similar share said neither man was responsible.
At the same time, far more voters believe that Trump has made the economy worse since taking office (50%) than better (21%).
Negative feelings about the economy spanned every race, level of education and region of the country, with less than 1% rating the economy as excellent, and 76% saying it was fair or poor.
Still, despite the upheaval in the markets, those views are largely unchanged since October.
Trump’s supporters mostly seem happy to give him more time to see how his economic agenda, especially on tariffs, plays out.
“I’ve actually thought, well, I’m 59, I don’t need a whole lot of stuff and I’m not going to buy a whole lot of stuff -- so for me, I would just sit back and let it ride for a while,” said Tracey Carson, a retiree and independent voter in Wisconsin. “The aluminum thing with Canada scared me a little because I’m a big Diet Coke drinker. But I think he’s using it as a tactic to make things fair and try to make a deal. Because he’s always all about the deal.”
One of Trump’s signature policies, mass deportation, continues to hold the majority of public support. And though he received negative marks for the deportation and imprisonment of Abrego Garcia in El Salvador, views of his handling of immigration policy remain relatively similar to what they were a year ago.
The policy of deporting people living in the United States illegally back to their home countries garnered 54% support, including from 18% of Democrats.
Still, voters overall viewed Trump’s handling of immigration negatively, with 47% approving and 51% disapproving.
The poll showed that Democrats begin the long march toward next year’s midterm elections with a glimmer of hope. Among all voters, 47% said they would rather vote for a Democrat for the House, compared with 44% for a Republican candidate.
Voters are clearly unhappy with the role played by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a senior White House adviser. With mixed success, he has overseen drastic cuts to federal agencies through the so-called Department of Government Efficiency and battled with Cabinet secretaries over the scope of his authority.
Just 35% of voters viewed Musk favorably. And perhaps even more revealingly, attaching his name to his actions made them even less popular. The Times asked two questions about cuts by DOGE, and the spending reductions were more popular when Musk’s name was not included.
Adam Schechter, 46, a tech specialist in Springfield, Virginia, who voted for Trump last year, said he supported much of the president’s agenda but was concerned about the “very messy” way that he was going about it.
“A chainsaw, as you might say,” Schechter said, two months after Musk wielded a literal chainsaw to promote his cuts. “The way it’s all haphazardly handled has been not something I generally approve of.”
He was uneasy, too, about the “consolidation of federal power in the executive branch.”
“I didn’t like it under Biden,” he said. “I don’t really like it under Trump.”
How this poll was conducted
Here are the key things to know about this poll from The New York Times and Siena College:
▪ Interviewers spoke with 913 voters nationwide from April 21-24, 2025.
▪ Times/Siena polls are conducted by telephone, using live interviewers, in both English and Spanish. Overall, 97% of respondents were contacted on a cellphone for this poll.
▪ Voters are selected for the survey from a list of registered voters. The list contains information on the demographic characteristics of every registered voter, allowing us to make sure we reach the right number of voters of each party, race and region. For this poll, interviewers placed more than 120,000 calls to more than 35,000 voters.
▪ To further ensure that the results reflect the entire voting population, not just those willing to take a poll, we give more weight to respondents from demographic groups that are underrepresented among survey respondents, like people without a college degree. You can see more information about the characteristics of respondents and the weighted sample at the bottom of the results and methodology page, under “Composition of the Sample.”
▪ The margin of sampling error among registered voters is plus or minus 3.8 percentage points. In theory, this means that the results should reflect the views of the overall population most of the time, though many other challenges create additional sources of error. When the difference between two values is computed -- such as a candidate’s lead in a race -- the margin of error is twice as large.
You can see full results and a detailed methodology at nytimes.com/interactive/2025/04/25/us/elections/times-siena-poll-crosstabs.html. If you want to read more about how and why the Times/Siena Poll is conducted, you can see answers to frequently asked questions and submit your own questions at nytimes.com/article/times-siena-poll-methodology.html.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Copyright 2025
This story was originally published April 25, 2025 at 4:15 PM