Cliff Young on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal dissects President Trump’s 42% approval—8 points lower than his first-year average, signaling electoral peril. Key events like tariffs (30% disapproval) and the ICE shooting of Alex Predi (55% view excessive force) hurt his core agenda, while immigration (39% approval) offers fleeting partisan gains. Polls reveal 71% support deportation but with tactical unease, and nativism—distinct from racism—now dominates politics, widening since 1995 as parties diverge on hiring priorities. With affordability top for 2026 elections, Democrats lead 47.7% to Republicans’ 42.5%, yet partisan biases skew perceptions of economic progress, exposing deep fractures in trust and identity. [Automatically generated summary]
For instance, Liberation Day tariffs announced, signing of the One Big Beautiful Bill, the government shutdown, the capture of Maduro, the shooting, fatal shooting of Renee Goode.
Can you explain how any of those impacted President Trump's approval rating, if at all?
Well, I think for today's world, the highly polarized tribal world we live in, you have two sides, red and blue.
It's a pretty big spread because people typically select their team, whether, like I said before, whether it's red or blue, before they even answer a question.
And it makes sense too, right?
When you peel away the onion and you look at Trump's numbers on the issues, he does better than his issues.
There is kind of a brand bump there.
There's the Trump effect or Halo for him.
But on his issues, he's underwater, I would say, right now.
He's below 30.
His best issue is 39% immigration.
That's not great.
It's the strongest one.
The one he's weakest on, obviously, is cost of living, affordability.
And that's really going to be the one that, in our mind, determines the midterm elections.
But ultimately, this is a sample representative of the American population by demographics, by party persuasion, Republican, Democrat, and Independent.
We do this poll online.
We go to people's doors, we knock on their doors, or we send a mail, invite in the mail, excuse me.
We bring them to the poll.
This is a gold standard we've used over the course of the last decade or the last decades.
It's very analogous to other methodologies used, and that's specifically what we did.
The trend lines here, this is the red on top is Republicans, and then independents, or sorry, total is in the middle and gray, and then the blue is Democrat.
The percent who agree that when jobs are scarce, employers should prioritize hiring people of this country over immigrants.
It has interestingly not really changed that much over time for Republicans, but has changed for Democrats.
We'll start with Alan Rhinelander, Wisconsin Independent Line.
Go ahead, Alan.
unidentified
Hi, good morning.
Good morning.
I wanted to talk about the student loan issue.
And this is rarely asked about, and it probably isn't reflected very well in the polls.
But there are around 37 million voters in this country who will never be able to repay their student loans.
So around 40% of these people never even graduated college, but yet they have the student loan debt to deal with.
Now, the Republicans, up to this point in Trump's term, they get an F minus on actually handling this issue in a way that serves not only their constituents, but the whole entire country.
Now, Trump knows full well.
Lyndon McMahon, they both know full well that bankruptcy rights have got to be returned to these predatory loans.
Trump knows about bankruptcy.
Lynn the McMahon knows full well personally about bankruptcy.
Now, some smart Republicans like Ron DeSantis, they're calling for the return of bankruptcy with a clawback from the colleges.
And I think that's completely appropriate.
But, you know, that idea is getting nowhere within the party because, quite frankly, I think it's been captured by the elites, by the colleges, by the lending industry, and by local forces who are profiting wildly on this failed loan scam.
So here's your chart on if the 2026 congressional elections were held today, which of the following would be the single most important factor for you in deciding who to vote for?
Cost of living by far was the top as far as total goes, but for Democrats, it was protecting democracy and democratic norms.
Yeah, once again, cost of living or affordability is a critical issue.
In our mind, that will be the issue that defines the midterms this year.
But, you know, threats to democracy, worries about norms is a Democratic issue.
It's especially an issue among the more educated.
It's important to emphasize that point.
That's one of the Achilles' heels, in my opinion, of the Democratic Party, is that because they're top-heavy with educated people, they're worried about issues that aren't necessarily the focal point of the average American.
I think we're going to have a force kind of drawing parties and politicians to the center, to the average voter, which is focused on affordability.
But we can understand the breakdown of priorities that way.
The last point I was going to make is Republicans, while they're worried about cost of living, also worried about immigration.
Obviously, immigration is a critical issue, especially for their base.
Don, in Mantua Township, New Jersey, Independent Line, you're on the air, Don.
unidentified
Yes.
Do you think that with this Trump's antique's criticizing the halftime show of the Super Bowl and trying to build a memorial arch in his name, the other silly things that he has done, renaming the Kennedy Center?
And I think he's jeopardized the Republican Party and has put them in a position now that they are not only going to, they might lose the House, but they're also going to lose the Senate.
And if that happens, I think his presidency is over.
So would you vote for the Democrat or the Republican?
And you can see those lines are, as time goes on over the course of the year, those lines are starting to separate with Democrats on top at 47.7%, Republicans at 42.5%.
I just, I had a comment on a lot of the polls being like, the guest is saying it's like nativism, nativism, nativism, and that nativism isn't like racism.
And I just, I need white people to admit, like, whether it's the Super Bowl halftime show or white Americans' views on immigration or like when they say, I don't recognize the country that I live in right now, like I just need them to admit, like, they're scared because they're white.
Okay.
And they're afraid of anything or anybody that doesn't look like them or talk like them.
This country is on pace to become a majority minority for the first time in its history around like 2050.
And white people see their power dwindling.
So they're doing everything they can from the White House to the local city's mayor's office.
They're doing everything they can to re-entrench their power.
And I just need white people all around the country to admit that because that's where the healing is going to start.
We cannot fix this until we acknowledge the root of what it is.
And it's a critical point of the debate of what's going on, those social forces that are shaping our world and more specifically our politics.
In the book, we talk about these long-term trends.
We talk about the changing racial composition.
But when you put all these factors together, it's nativism that basically swamps out all the other explanations.
That's not to say that racism isn't there.
That's not to say that authoritarianism isn't there.
It's not to say that populism isn't there.
But it's ultimately about nativism.
And I think that's critically important because the policy levers we have at our disposal to address the issue of nativism or more specifically immigration are more concrete.
We can come across and we can come to consensus on some sort of broad-based plan.
I already talked about the fact that Americans are nuanced on that.
Yes, there's racism.
There's always been racism here.
Racism has always been an element of our politics, not just today, but over the course of our history.
But when we understand the politics and the dynamics today, it's really about, it's really a politics of belonging, who is an American, who isn't, who should belong to Club America and who should not.
Italian immigrants weren't, the Irish weren't considered white.
And I think our book goes through the history of nativism in the 1840s and the 1890s and the 1910s.
And each of those times, there was some sort of consensus on a modification in respect to immigration, because immigration does change the composition of a population.
It does threaten certain groups over others.
It is highly traumatic to a society.
And again, I think if we, yes, racism is there, but if we focus on that, we're missing the bigger picture.
And the bigger picture has a solution, which would be a comprehensive consensus on the issue of immigration.
And we have about the right, we have about the equal number of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents always in our sample.
America today is about one-third, one-third, one-third.
I think it's important to understand that a poll of a thousand is out of a thousand over 330 million people or a little bit less if you think of adults.
It's not sort of surprising that he's never been polled.
But if you've ever gotten a call on a cell phone and he's thought it was spam, it might be one of us pollsters.
So maybe we called him and he decided not to respond.
If he didn't respond, someone else like him probably responded.
And Gigi, Hillside, New Jersey, Democrat, go ahead, Gigi.
unidentified
So my concern is, you know, when are we going to stop talking and dancing around the lack of affordability in this country, remove our focus on other countries, and funnel our focus on improving the lives of everyday Americans?
They'll be selecting their rep. They'll be selecting their senator based upon those issues, based upon the issues of affordability.
I agree there's lots of noise out there, but when you poll after poll after poll, suggest that bread and butter issues are the driving issues of the day.
And if political actors, politicians, governments don't understand that, they'll be penalized on Election Day.
I want to ask you about consumer confidence in the U.S.
And I'll play you from a hearing last week.
This is Senator Pete Ricketts, a Republican of Nebraska, who asked Treasury Secretary Besant about what the Senate can do to help improve and raise low consumer confidence numbers.
Yet, despite all this progress, we're seeing consumer confidence is not really rebounding the way that the economy seems to be.
In your opinion, what more can we in the Senate be doing with regard to consumer confidence and making, you know, obviously we had 40-year high inflation under the Biden administration, but what more can we be doing in the Senate to be able to help out with confidence of consumers?
Other than telling consumers to turn off the MSNBC, a large part of it is a survey problem where Democrats vote very low, Republicans are more realistic, and then we end up what we're seeing.
My question for the gentleman is the way they select for the poll.
But the thing is, you know, I would ask them if the Democrats had won the election, would we have another five or ten million people in the country that are illegal?
I think the people and the way they, I don't think they're asking that on the poll.
So, you know, that's the way I feel.
And I don't have too much faith in the polls because they can be, you know, very selective.