Trump’s Support Slips in Wisconsin After First Year Back in Office
Marquette poll finds steady erosion in approval as economic concerns and immigration clashes take a toll.
Donald Trump speaks at Discovery World. Photo Taken Oct. 1, 2024 by Graham Kilmer.
President Donald Trump’s approval rating with Wisconsinites slipped over the first year of his second term while maintaining strong support from Republicans in the state.
During his first year back in office, Trump made controversial moves such as enacting a trade war, aggressively cracking down on immigrants who are here illegally, and threatening or using force against other countries, including Iran, Venezuela and Greenland.
Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law School Poll, said that these moves have hurt Trump’s approval ratings in Wisconsin and around the country. But the president retains strong support among his supporters and the Republican Party.
“A big part of this is the deep partisan polarization,” Franklin said. “Because even as the public overall is giving him approval ratings in the low 40s, Republicans continue to give him an approval rating of 85 to 88 percent and that supports him with his base quite solidly. Those folks have not moved away from him over the course of the year. At most, their approval has come down from about 92 percent. But he’s substantially underwater with independents, and, not surprisingly, very underwater with Democrats.”
Franklin spoke with Kate Archer Kent of “Wisconsin Today” about Trump’s first year back in office.
The following interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Kate Archer Kent: What do you notice about approval ratings for President Trump, after one year in office?
Charles Franklin: Over the course of his first year, his job approval numbers have moved steadily, but I would say slowly down, going from about 48 percent approval down to about 41 or 42 percent approval. Now, you will see headlines that say his approval has plummeted. I don’t think that’s a good adjective. I think what we’ve seen is a pretty steady erosion of his support. And right now, in our state polling, he’s about 14 points more disapproval than approval, so a net of negative 14. That puts him about where he was at this time in his first term. Though, in the national polling, he’s running just a little below where he was at this point in the first term.
KAK: We have seen the protests that have occurred nationwide and here in Wisconsin following the fatal shooting of Renee Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis. Do these events impact Trump’s approval rating?
CF: Yes, they do, but they’re not the overwhelming force that you might expect them to be. Again, part of this is polarization, because in the early polling after the Renee Good shooting, we saw solid majorities of Republicans approving of the ICE agents’ actions or saying they were justified, while majorities of independents and huge majorities of Democrats don’t think that shooting was justified.
There’s also division on the handling of deportations and immigration issues generally. When we look at how Trump has handled border security, he gets one of his highest ratings — 54 percent approve of what he’s done on the southern border, but on immigration overall, that falls to 45 percent approval.
And when we ask about how ICE is handling its job and handling enforcement around the country, approval of that’s even a bit lower. And so there’s a range here, even within the topic of immigration, where border security is still the president’s strong suit, but deportations less so, and ICE even less so.
KAK: Economic issues were seen as President Trump’s biggest strength during his 2024 campaign. How do Wisconsinites feel now about his handling of the economy?
CF: This has turned into a weakness for him. In our recent polling, his rating on the economy overall is about 7 points lower than his overall approval rating, and his handling of inflation is even lower. So overall, we had him at 43 percent approval, but the economy at just 36 and inflation all the way down to 28 percent. So those things that were big issues and big problems for Joe Biden in his last year, and things that Trump used as issues effectively against Biden and then against Harris — those issues are now Trump’s weak spots.
Wisconsinites’ approval of President Trump falling after first year back in office was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.
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I can’t understand how his base continues to support him in view of how often he betrays them. Promising DOGE checks that never arrive, tariff checks that never arrive, healthcare reform that never arrives., In many ways it reminds me of the last days of the third Reich when the Russians were only 2 miles away from the center of Berlin and yet Hitler’s staunch followers clung to their support of him. It’s really quite baffling.