Most Americans trust Trump to handle immigration, poll finds. What about other issues?

Brendan Rascius, The Charlotte Observer on Feb 17, 2025

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Most Americans have a great deal of trust in President Donald Trump to handle immigration during his second term, new polling shows. But few have strong faith in him to handle health care, the environment and race relations.

The latest YouGov poll — conducted between Jan. 24 and 28 — asked 1,132 respondents how much trust they have in Trump when it comes to 20 key issues.

Here is a breakdown of the results:

The issues

Fifty-two percent of respondents said they have a lot of trust in Trump to handle immigration, making it the issue he performs the strongest on.

The economy and foreign policy came in second, with 46% and 45% of respondents, respectively, expressing a lot of trust in Trump, according to the poll, which has a margin of error of 4 percentage points.

These were followed by foreign trade (43%), inflation (42%), crime (42%) and the Israel-Palestinian conflict (41%).

For the remaining issues, the share of respondents expressing a lot of trust fell below 40%.

For example, on the Supreme Court, 37% said they have a lot of trust, and on guns, 35% said the same.

The issues which inspired the least confidence in respondents were the environment (29%), race relations (30%) and abortion (30%).

About half of respondents also signaled they had no trust at all in Trump when it came to two topics: LGBTQ issues, with 51% expressing no trust, and transgender issues, with 50% expressing no trust.

As could be expected, there was a massive partisan divide when it came to confidence in Trump to handle key issues, with most Republicans and only a small share of Democrats expressing a lot of trust across all 20 issues.

Republicans had the most confidence in the president to handle immigration and the economy — with 87% saying they had a lot of trust. In contrast, 61% of GOP respondents said they have a lot of trust to handle LGBTQ issues and abortion.

Democrats signaled the most confidence on immigration, with 19% saying they have a lot of trust in Trump. And 13% said the same for the Israel-Palestinian conflict. But just 5% of Democrats said they have a lot of trust in Trump to handle the environment, race relations and democracy — making these the issues the president is the weakest on with Democrats.

Descriptors for Trump

The poll also posed respondents with 20 descriptors and asked them how much they apply to Trump.

A majority, 58%, said “opportunistic” applies to Trump a lot — making it the most resonant descriptor.

Fifty-four percent of respondents said “arrogant” applies a lot, and 47% said “divisive” applies a lot. Following these were “a strong leader” (46%), “reckless” (46%) and “dishonest” (45%).

The two descriptors that ranked at the bottom were “likeable” and “compassionate” — with 29% of respondents saying they applied a lot to Trump.

Here, again, there was a noticeable partisan divide.

The vast majority of Republicans, 84%, said “qualified,” “intelligent” and “strong leader” apply a lot to Trump. In contrast, 81% of Democrats said “arrogant” applied a lot, and 79% said “corrupt” applied a lot.

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