While Democrats and others opposed to the agenda of President Donald Trump find each new day of his administration to be fresh hell, Republicans are soaring in their approval, according to Gallup.
Within the first month of Trump 2.0, the polling firm has tracked an uptick in the share of U.S. adults who are satisfied with the way things are going in the United States. That surge is driven entirely by Republicans, whose satisfaction jumped from 10% in January to 68% in February.
What happened in between those two polling points? Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20 and the most radical and rapid transformation of federal government in history. In the same month’s span, Democratic satisfaction tumbled from 32% to 5%. More independents are satisfied now than a month ago, 30% versus 18%.
The Republican surge is responsible for overall U.S. satisfaction rising to 34% in February from 20% in January.
“The inauguration of Donald Trump has greatly altered Republicans’ and Democrats’ satisfaction with the way things are going in the United States. Republicans now show the largest increase in satisfaction in successive polls throughout the past 34 years, while Democrats’ decrease essentially ties as the largest,” wrote Jeffrey Jones of Gallup. “Presidential inaugurations have become major turning points in how partisans evaluate the state of the nation. In the past, ‘rallying events’ involving U.S. military action and other international incidents have had similar effects, but not to the same degree that a change in the party of the president does in the current environment.”
These shifts are increasingly tied to Americans’ connection of government to their satisfaction with the state of affairs.
For example, Jones said, in Trump’s first term, the government ranked as the most important problem 38 times in 48 measurements. And in Biden’s recently completed term, the government was the top-mentioned problem 33 times in 47 measurements. In contrast, the government was the top problem 19 times in Barack Obama’s eight years as president (all during his second term), not once during George W. Bush’s presidency, and only once in Clinton’s presidency (in September 1998, after the release of the Starr report investigating the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, among other matters).
The 58-point surge in Republican satisfaction recorded this month is the largest Gallup has measured between surveys dating back to 1991, when results were first compiled by political party.
Likewise, the 27-point drop in Democratic satisfaction is significant but not unprecedented.
Gallup recorded a 28-point drop among Democrats in the days after Trump’s victory in the 2016 election and a 25-point drop for Republicans after Joe Biden defeated Trump in the 2020 election.
These results are based on a Feb. 3-16 Gallup poll, the first reading on this measure since Trump’s inauguration.