Perceptions of Donald Trump a month into his second term

The stability of Donald Trump’s approval rating was practically a meme during his first administration. No matter the headlines, scarcely any voters appeared to change their minds about the president, at least not when asked the simple question, Do you approve or disapprove of how Donald Trump is handling his job as president?

It remains to be seen whether Trump in his second term will enjoy (or suffer) from the same apparently locked-in public attitudes. But to shed more light into what Americans really think about him, the Marquette Law School Poll has begun asking two open-ended questions. What do you [like/dislike] about Donald Trump? We randomize the order of the two questions, and respondents can write whatever they want.

Each survey, we ask about 1,000 adults these questions. All but two or three percent share a response.

In December, 35% expressed entirely negative views of Trump, 12% were entirely positive, and 51% were mixed, sharing both likes and dislikes (the remaining 2% refused to answer). This changed only slightly in early 2025. The group with mixed opinions shrank by 4 percentage points, and the other categories grew by 1 or 2 points each.

Summary of open-ended survey responses
in the Marquette Law School Poll, national adult sample
Attitude toward Donald Trumpsurvey dates
12/2-11/241/27-2/6/25
Can name likes and dislikes51%47%
Doesn’t dislike anything12%14%
Doesn’t like anything35%36%
no answer2%3%

Donald Trump won in 2024 because he beat Harris by about 38 points among voters holding mixed views of him. He enjoyed especially high support among those who hadn’t voted at all in 2020.

Most of these people still approve of how Trump has begun his second term. However, Trump’s approval rating has slipped with this group, relative to December 2024.

In December 2024, 53% of adults approved (and 47% disapproved) of how Trump had handled his job during his first term. About a month into Trump’s second term, 48% approve and 52% disapprove of how Trump is currently handling his job.

The drop in approval is entirely due to lower views of Trump’s current job performance among those with more ambivalent views of him.

Among those who only listed things they like about Trump, 96% approved of his past job performance in the December poll and 96% likewise approve of his current job performance in the February poll.

Conversely, 97% of those with only negative things to say about Trump disapproved of his past job performance in December and disapprove of his current job performance in February.

But among those with mixed views of Trump, 77% gave him retrospective approval in December, falling to 67% approval in February.

Themes in the open-ended responses

Some voters express idiosyncratic combinations of views when given the opportunity. You’ll find the occasional conservative whose only complaint about Trump is his support for Israel or the odd Harris voter who dislikes Trump’s “racist attitude” but appreciates that he “doesn’t drink or smoke dope.”

But most responses fall into familiar categories. Here are a few themes that stood out to me.

  • Outside of the 36% of adults who despise Trump, Trump’s hyper-aggressive first month in office is usually perceived favorably. Many people said things like, “he’s fulfilling campaign promises,” or “He has already done more in a few days than Biden did.”
  • A common complaint among those who generally like Trump is his communication style. Some representative comments: “he talks too much”; “the way he talks, very crude”; and “mean tweets, rehearsing [sic] his wins in election too often.”
  • On the other hand, even some people who disapprove of him like aspects of his communication. “Confidence, has charisma, is funny on occasion”; “He’s funny. He says what he thinks.”
  • Quite a few people complained about Trump’s pardoning of the January 6th rioters, and few or none mentioned it favorably.

Finally, these data also undermine a point I have occasionally heard from conservative commentators. Referencing the more “muted” response to Trump’s second term from Democratic politicians and left-leaning organizations, some have argued that opposition toward Trump’s first term was largely an elite, media creation.

On the contrary, in reading these open-ended responses I see no diminution of opposition to Trump. If anything, the vitriolic tone may have intensified among those who like nothing about him. This group is not a majority of the country. It includes under 40% of adults in our sample, but is is more than twice as large as the group of people with only positive things to say about Trump.

During Trump’s first term, his opponents turned out at unusually high levels–flipping seats during special elections and midterms at a startling clip. Democrats will look to repeat that playbook in 2025 and 2026. The surprise victory of a Democratic candidate in a Trump +21 Iowa state senate district is a small, early indication that this strategy may work.

Explore the data

The above is just my interpretation of these responses. I strongly encouraged you to read them for yourself. Click here to access our web app for viewing responses. The tool allows you to see 5 randomly* selected responses with each click of the button. Some of these responses contain profane language and many contain typos. We present them in unedited form.

screenshot of a table from the web application showing random responses to the open ended questions about Donald Trump
Continue ReadingPerceptions of Donald Trump a month into his second term

What do voters and non-voters really think about Donald Trump?

Donald Trump is the most famous person in, arguably, the world. His name was googled more than any other in 2024, 2023, 2021, and 2019. To better understand how American adults feel about this ubiquitous figure, we asked each of the 1,063 respondents in the Marquette Law School Poll national survey of adults, December 2-11, 2024, to answer two questions in their own words.

  • What do you like about Donald Trump?
  • What do you dislike about Donald Trump?

The order of the two questions was randomized. Since the survey was conducted online, respondents could write as much as they wished. (These “open-ended questions” were part of a more traditional survey, the subject of separate news releases.)

In the 2024 election, 36% of our sample voted for Kamala Harris, 38% for Donald Trump, 3% for a third-party candidate, and 23% didn’t vote. The sample gets the mix of Harris and Trump supporters right, though it overrepresents voters as a whole. Early estimates suggest that about 36% of eligible voters didn’t participate in the 2024 election.

We classified each of the respondents by whether or not they answered both questions. A majority—51% of respondents—listed at least one thing they liked and disliked about Trump. (We classified clearly sarcastic responses as non-answers.) Listing things they dislike about Trump but including nothing positive were 35%. Fewer adults, 12%, listed positive things about Trump but nothing negative.

Perceptions of Trump and vote choice

The table below shows how each of those groups voted in 2024. Trump and Harris each won equal shares of the adults (76%) with, respectively, only positive or only negative views of the former president. Among those listing both likes and dislikes of Trump, 55% voted for Trump, 17% for Harris, 4% for a third party, and 24% did not vote.

In other words, just over a third of adults held wholly negative views of Trump and just over 10% held wholly positive views. Their votes reflect those views. But Trump won the lion’s share of the vote among people with mixed views of him.

2024 vote of U.S. adults by their view of Trump
About Donald J. Trumpnpct of totalHarrisTrumpThird partyNonvoter
Can name likes and dislikes54551%17%55%4%24%
Doesn’t dislike anything12612%1%76%3%20%
Doesn’t like anything37335%76%1%1%22%
no answer192%31%18%6%46%
Total1,063100%36%38%3%23%

These data also shed some light on how Trump managed to defeat Harris after losing to Joe Biden in 2020. We asked respondents about their participation in the 2020 presidential election. Thirty-five percent remembered voting for Biden, 31% for Trump, 3% for third parties, and 31% said they didn’t vote. Recalled vote may be error-prone, but in this case it closely matches Joe Biden’s 4.5-point margin of victory in 2020.

Harris won about the same share as Biden had among the 35% of adults who couldn’t name anything they like about Trump. Like Biden, she won practically none of the vote among those who dislike nothing about Trump. And Harris won about the same fraction of the vote as Biden among those naming both likes and dislikes about Trump.

While Harris’ vote share changed little from Biden’s in each group, Trump’s vote share grew among those with mixed feelings. Trump won 55% of adults with mixed feelings, up from 46% in 2020. This was possible because the share that did not vote in this group fell from 33% in 2020 to 24% in 2024. Likewise, Trump in 2024 won 76% of the vote among those expressing no negative views of him, up from 59% among these same adults in 2020. And only 20% of these adults didn’t vote in 2024, down from 38% in 2020.

2020 vote of U.S. adults by their view of Trump in Dec. 2024
among adults surveyed Dec. 2-11, 2024
About Donald J. Trumpnpct of totalBidenTrumpThird partyNonvoter
Can name likes and dislikes54551%18%46%3%33%
Doesn’t dislike anything12612%2%59%1%38%
Doesn’t like anything37335%71%1%2%25%
no answer192%23%18%6%54%
Total1,063100%35%31%3%31%

In our December 2024 sample, Harris defeated Trump by 3 percentage points among 2024 voters who also voted in 2020. Among 2024 voters who didn’t vote in 2020, she lost by 12 points.

Our survey is just one data point in a sense, but it adds to the emerging body of evidence that Trump’s campaign successfully turned out infrequent, “low-propensity” voters who like Trump but often stay home.

Explore the data

There is no substitute for reading the words of voters themselves. Click here to access our web app for viewing responses. The tool allows you to see 5 randomly* selected responses with each click of the button. Some of these responses contain profane language and many contain typos. We present them in unedited form.

RespondentSample random responses
Vote in 2024Vote in 2020What do you like about Donald Trump?What do you dislike about Donald Trump?
Male, 34, HispanicDonald TrumpDonald TrumpBusiness plans to bring back production to America, and border controlGrandiose attitude and speaking without thinking about the consequences.
Male, 27, Other/MultipleDid not voteDid not voteGood president for economic purposes. In my opinion, prefer trump over kamalaTariffs for other countries are too much
Female, 50, WhiteDonald TrumpDonald TrumpHis policies of smaller gov’t and less regulations which will open America up to less restrictions on oil and gas. Also his policies on immigration and closing the border align with my views.His mouth and some of the unprofessional things he says
Female, 44, BlackKamala HarrisJoe BidenHe doesn’t care at allHim personally
Male, 49, WhiteDonald TrumpDid not votePolicies, strength globally, strong economy. Strong border security.Nothing. Donald Trump was an excellent president before and will be excellent again.
Female, 51, Other/MultipleDid not voteJoe BidenI feel like when Donald Trump was president we had peace with other countries and the fact it was no inflation and the crime was more controlledN/A
Continue ReadingWhat do voters and non-voters really think about Donald Trump?

Introducing the Lubar Center’s New Tool for Accessing Wisconsin Election Data

Past election results in Wisconsin aren’t always easy to find. Official, certified election results are spread across many different cumbersome Excel workbooks on multiple websites. And official statistics do not compile votes by municipalities.

To solve all of these problems, the Lubar Center has created a new online website, MULawPoll.org, which covers all presidential, gubernatorial, and congressional races from 2000 through 2022. It also includes state legislative races from 2010-2022. The website will be updated with 2024 results once they have been certified.

a screenshot of MuLawPoll.org

The website includes a chapter for every county, featuring demographic data and sortable/filterable tables allowing deeper exploration of voting trends. A user can quickly answer questions like “How did the village of Cedarburg vote in past presidential elections?” or “How many Dane County municipalities voted for Tommy Thompson in 2012?” We also provide a table of election results aggregated by every municipality in the state, where municipalities that straddle county lines (like Wisconsin Dells) are presented as a single unit.

Other chapters include a long term overview of partisan strength in Wisconsin, an essay by Craig Gilbert about Wisconsin’s uniquely competitive political environment, and a detailed look at Marquette Law Poll data pertaining to the 2024 election written by Charles Franklin.

The website’s election data have been compiled from official returns, collected either from the Wisconsin Election Commission or the Wisconsin Historical Society. The underlying data files, along with documentation and processing scripts are available here.

Please direct questions to John Johnson or Charles Franklin.

Continue ReadingIntroducing the Lubar Center’s New Tool for Accessing Wisconsin Election Data