A new University of Massachusetts Amherst poll out this week painted a pretty clear picture of the way Americans are feeling about President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs and the global trade war they’ve sparked.
They don’t like it one bit. And three months into the Republican’s tenure, more Americans (51%) say they disapprove of his job performance than those (44%) who said they approve of it.
The poll of 1,000 nationwide respondents, conducted April 4 through April 9, had a margin of error of 3.7%.
Responding to the roiling markets, Trump has pressed pause on many of the trade measures. Even so, broad swaths of voters are worried about his management of the economy and a host of other key issues.
“Three months into his second administration, the honeymoon might be over for President Donald Trump as a majority of Americans express disapproval of the job that he is doing,” UMass Polling Director Tatishe Nteta said.
Still, with the 2026 midterm elections still some 18 months away, it’s a guarantee that much can — and will — change.
With that in mind, here are three takeaways from the poll that should concern the White House and its GOP allies on Capitol Hill — and one big one for Democrats looking for wins next year.
It’s still the economy
In 2020, Trump, the billionaire real estate magnate, held himself as the expert who could get the nation’s economic engine running again. It remained a top issue among voters in 2024 and helped power Trump into the White House over former Vice President Kamala Harris.
Sixty-two percent of respondents said they didn’t think he was handling inflation well, while 58% said the same about his management of trade policy, according to the poll. And 53% said the same about Trump’s work on job creation.
Nationwide, the inflation rate stood at 2.4% in March, down from 2.8% in February, data show. While inflation slowed for some energy sources (gasoline and fuel oil), it accelerated for natural gas and food, data show.
The U.S. economy added 228,000 jobs in March, while hourly wages also rose, data showed.
Even with recent retreats and pauses, Trump “has gone ‘all-in’ on an aggressive tariff policy that he believes will jumpstart the American economy and bring high-paying jobs and lower costs back to the nation,” Nteta said. “It remains to be seen if his bet will pay off, but if it doesn’t, he and the Republican Party will likely face an electorate poised for change in 2026 and beyond.”
Still “this early in his term, President Trump still has ample opportunity to convince his voters that he was the right person for the job, but the clock is ticking, and his supporters are watching to see if he can deliver,” Nteta added.
The people who are angry are really angry
This might be the biggest takeaway from the new poll. Among voters who disapprove of Trump’s job performance, 44% of them said they “strongly disapproved” of the president.
Those numbers suggest “that among those opposed, most feel this very intensely. Frustration with Trump is clearly tied to the belief that he is mismanaging the economy, which has had a very rough ride during Trump’s tenure in office,” UMass political science professor Jesse Rhodes said.
The poll shows that Trump continues to command strong support among the key parts of his base: Self-identified Republicans (89%), self-identified conservatives (83%), self-identified Trump voters (87%), and older Americans (50%).
But there are fissures in key issue areas, the poll showed.
Bare pluralities of voters told UMass pollsters they believe Trump is strengthening American standing in the world, strengthening American democracy, bolstering public health and strengthening the U.S. Constitution. And that cut across men and women, according to the poll.
But if there’s a silver lining, it’s that a majority of respondents (53%) remain hopeful that Trump will make decisions that put the interests of “ordinary Americans first,” UMass political science professor Ray La Raja said
The third-term talk
We’ve all heard Trump’s talk about serving a third term — even though it’s explicitly forbidden by the 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Trump and his supporters, however, have floated the idea that there could be a way to circumvent this language. And last week, conservative influencer Steve Bannon told talk show host Bill Maher that “a team of people” are working on the issue.
“President Trump is going to run for a third term, and President Trump is ... going to be president of the United States,” Bannon told Maher, according to an account published by Fox News.
According to the UMass poll, however, voters have other ideas.
An equal number of men and women (65%) told UMass pollsters they oppose Trump serving beyond 2028. The opposition also cuts across age groups, with 70% of voters aged 18-29 opposing a third term and 66% of those aged 55 and older also opposing the idea, according to the poll.
Sentiment among Trump’s voters is more measured, with 37% supporting it, compared to 39% who opposed it. Just about a quarter (24%) of self-identified Trump voters said they neither opposed nor supported the idea.
Bad news for Democrats
The poll may hold bad news for Trump and Republicans. But for Democrats, it’s even worse.
Just 29% of the poll’s respondents said they approved of the job the Democrats are doing, compared to the 41% who approved of the GOP.
There have been signs recently that Democrats may be recovering their sea legs after last November’s defeat at the polls. Democrats captured a seat on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court, turning away a candidate who had the backing of Trump ally Elon Musk.
In Florida, Democrats cut Republican margins in a pair of special elections for the U.S. House. U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., also have been attracting big crowds at rallies focused on economic issues.
The pressure cooker of national politics means that presidential approval ratings are “fundamentally different measure than they once were,” UMass political science professor Alexander Theodoridis said.
In short, partisans on each side are reluctant to say something nice about the other side if it means abandoning their own party, he said.
“Gone are the days when both George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush saw their approval numbers rise to the 90% range,” Theodoridis said. “Donald Trump is perhaps this polarized era’s most polarizing figure, and his approval numbers reflect this. Even so, presidential approval numbers in the low-40s and disapproval at over 50% should prompt concern among Team Trump.”
But “Trump’s fellow Republicans can take some solace in the fact that the Democratic Party’s approval numbers are even more pathetic,” he concluded.
Read more analysis from John L. Micek
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