In Jan.63% said Court should rule against Trump, including 33% of Republicans
On Feb. 20 the United State Supreme Court ruled against President Trump’s authority to impose tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977. The case is Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump.
Public views of the case have been consistently in favor of upholding limits on the tariff authority since the Marquette Law School national poll first asked about this case in September. The table shows opinion over three national surveys.
The partisan divide on the tariff case is somewhat less stark than on many issues, with a significant minority of Republicans opposing the president’s position. A third of Republicans in the January poll wanted the Court to strike down the tariffs, an increase from 26% in November. More than two-thirds of independents favored overturning Trump’s use of tariffs, as did an overwhelming 92% of Democrats.
Approval of Trump’s handling of tariffs has consistently been below his overall approval rating in Marquette Law School national polls, with approval on tariffs below 40% in each of five polls since May 2025. In January, 26% of Republicans disapproved of Trump’s handling of tariffs, as did 71% of independents and 95% of Democrats.
A majority of the public, 56% say that tariffs hurt the U.S. economy, while 30% think they help the economy and 14% say tariffs don’t make much difference. Views of the effect of tariffs are related to opinion of how the Court should rule, as shown in the table below. Those who think tariffs help the economy are in favor of overturning the limits on the president’s authority, 77%, though even among this group more than one-in-five think the president’s authority should be limited, 23%. Among those who say tariffs harm the economy, 89% think the Court should limit presidential authority. Opinion is evenly divided among those who say tariffs don’t make much difference.
The Court and the President
A large majority of adults believe that the president must obey a Supreme Court decision, 82% with 17% who say the president can ignore a decision with which he disagrees. These views have been quite stable in 10 Marquette polls since 2019, never dipping below 76% saying the president must obey the Court, and not below 83% since Jan. 2025.
This belief in the authority of the Court is not a partisan matter. Among Republicans 76% say the president must obey the Court, as do 79% of independents and 90% of Democrats.
In January, a majority, 57% said the Court was going out of it’s way to avoid ruling against Trump, while 43% said the Court was not doing so. Among Republicans 34% thought the Court was avoiding ruling against Trump, as did 59% of independents and 78% of Democrats.
Approval of the Supreme Court
Approval of the U.S. Supreme Court has fallen since September, from 50% to 44% in January. Approval fell sharply in 2022 following the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision which overturned abortion rights established in Roe v. Wade. Net approval, the percentage approval minus disapproval, remained negative throughout the remainder of 2022 and through 2024. In January 2025 net approval moved up into positive territory before turning down in July. The table shows approval of the Court since September 2020.
About the Marquette Law School Poll
The survey was conducted Jan. 21-28, 2026, interviewing 1003 adults nationwide, with a margin of error of +/-3.4 percentage points.
Interviews were conducted using the SSRS Opinion Panel, a national probability sample with interviews conducted online. The detailed methodology statement, survey instrument, topline results, and crosstabs for this release are available at https://law.marquette.edu/poll/category/results-and-data/
When I refreshed my presidential approval database in January, I wondered when Gallup would update their measure from December. They usually release approval in mid-month, but there wasn’t an update as of Jan. 20. I assumed it would come soon.
Now we learn that there won’t be any more Gallup presidential approval polls. As reported in the Washington Post and the New York Times on Feb. 11, Gallup has decided to discontinue their approval polling. Gallup made a similar decision in 2015 to discontinue their presidential horse race polls.
This is a loss to the public. The Gallup organization has the longest running, and most voluminous, time series of approval, dating back to 1937. While their methodology has evolved over time, they have always used what was “state of the art” methods for the time, and their question wording has been stable for decades, after evolving a bit in the early years. That means when we want to make the best apples-to-apples comparison across presidents and decades, Gallup is the indispensable source.
Here is what I now realize to be my final update of all the 2846 Gallup approval polls since Roosevelt in Aug. 1937 to Trump in Dec. 2025.
There are plenty of high quality national polls available now, so Gallup is hardly the only game in town. The polling averages from Silver Bulletin, FiftyPlusOne, New York Times, RealClearPolitics and others are now widely recognized as a better way to track the full measure of approval across dozens of pollsters rather than rely on a single pollster.
When George Gallup started the poll in the 1930s there was money to be made in public opinion polling. Newspapers across the country subscribed to his polls and distributed his results to a national audience. Gallup actually offered newspapers a money back guarantee that his 1936 presidential horse race poll would outperform the Literary Digest poll that year, which it did. The poll also survived embarrassing errors, most notably the 1948 presidential election.
These days, there isn’t such a financial interest in providing opinion data to the public. Private polling for interest groups, parties and candidates remains financially viable, but those polls serve private, not public, interests. News organizations either run their own polls, contracting the work through various pollsters, or report on polls they don’t produce themselves but also don’t pay for. Universities (like my Marquette Law School Poll) produce public polls in the public interest and for the publicity value. Gallup is reported to say they are refocusing their business away from approval polling, which is sad but understandable.
This moment of closure lets us make one final list of the lows and highs of Gallup approval results over the decades.
The all time lowest low goes to Harry Truman, at 22%. John F. Kennedy has the highest low, never falling below 56%. And as for highs, George W. Bush owns that record at 90%, eclipsing his father, George H.W. Bush by one point. As for the lowest high, that belongs to the current president, at 47% in his second term, two points lower than his high in the first term. No other president has failed to reach 50% on their best days.
That all time low for Truman was misreported for some decades as a point higher, 23%. I found the discrepancy in 2006, tracked down the evidence, and presented it to Gallup’s then Editor in Chief, Frank Newport, who was gracious enough to review my results and confirm the new low of 22%. I told that story in a post in July 2006. To my surprise, the post still lives at my first website, Political Arithmetik
Presidents can tie their highs or lows in multiple polls on different days. The next table shows all the lows and highs and the dates on which those polls were taken. Some of the dates are instructive. Trump’s second term high came 7 days after his inauguration. And his first term highs were all during the early months of the Covid pandemic. Biden’s low came about the time he dropped out of the presidential race in 2024. For George W. Bush and Franklin D. Roosevelt, their highest marks came after attacks on the United States, after Sept. 11, 2001 and after Dec. 7, 1941.
As for largest range from high to low, that honor is shared by George W. Bush and Harry S Truman, both with a 65 point range, Bush from 90-25 and Truman from 87-22. (Truman lacks a middle name, just an initial, hence no period after the S, a lesson I learned from my 12th grade government teacher, Dr. Austin F. Staples. The great Google AI tells me official documents include a period, but I trust Dr. Staples on this.)
So there you have it. An end of a polling era. “Official” highs and lows will no longer have a consistent standard to use. This means as a practical problem that the highs and lows going forward will come from outliers– the rare poll with an exceptionally high approval and the exceptionally low ones. That, I think, is a loss.
The Democratic party has spent the last year with a net favorability rating considerably worse than that of the Republican party. Yet the Democrats have had strong successes in picking up seats in the Virginia and New Jersey legislative races in 2025 and in special elections around the country. How can the more unpopular party be winning?
Here is the net favorability rating for the Democratic and Republican parties since early 2025. While both parties have had net negative ratings all year, the Democrats have been consistently worse, with a net rating hovering around -30 percentage points, except in November. Republicans by contrast have generally been around -14 with a recent decline to almost -20 points.
The one brighter moment for the Democrats was in November when their net favorability rose about 13 points and momentarily matched the GOP, before sinking again in January. The November poll was conducted during the shutdown. Democrats benefited, if briefly.
Why is the Democratic party so unpopular relative to the Republican party? Do Republicans give especially unfavorable ratings to the Democrats? Yes, of course they do. Just as Democrats deeply dislike the Republicans. Is it that independents are especially sour on the Democrats? No. Independents dislike both parties but by about the same amount. So the answer lies within the Democratic base. Democrats have much lower net favorability of their own party than Republicans do have for their party.
Republican net approval for their party has been as high as +80 points and remains above +60 points all year. And their disdain for Democrats is strong, consistently a net -80 points or lower.
Democrats return the favor by giving Republicans net negative ratings of close to -90 points. But when it comes to their own party, Democrats give a net favorably rating of just about +30 points, or about 30 points worse than Republicans give their party. This is who is pulling down Democratic party ratings. It is coming from inside the house.
The exception is November, when Democrat’s net favorability toward their party rose not quite 25 points, falling only a little short of Republican favorability of the GOP. But it was short lived. The shutdown ended and Democrats who were buoyed by their party’s shutdown stand, once more settled into discontent.
A party with weak ratings from its own base voters would not expect promising electoral outcomes. One partisan group is relatively pleased with their party’s performance, the other relatively displeased. Seems like a bad omen, yes? No. The actual performance of Democratic candidates has been quite strong for a year, with a number of seat pickups and general over-performance of 2024 margins even in losses. What gives?
Democratic partisans are, indeed, disappointed with their party, while Republicans are not. But disappointment is not producing defection. The same Democrats who are unfavorable to their party are nearly unanimous in their dislike of Donald Trump. Here is Trump favorability by party ID. Within each panel the green line is people with a favorable view of the Democratic party while the purple line is those with an unfavorable view. In the right-most panel we see that among Democrats the profound dislike of Trump is virtually identical no matter how one feels about the Democratic party. Less than 10% feel favorable to Trump.
On the Republican side, those who dislike the Democrats give Trump favorability ratings in the high 80s. The small number of Republicans who are favorable to the Democrats (this is just 6% of all Republicans), however, have shown a steady loss of affection for Trump, sinking to under 50% favorable in January. This shows that there can be defection within a party, and ironically it comes in the GOP where support for Trump is often said to be unshakable. Not to make to much of this. It is only 6% of Republicans with a liking for the Democratic party– hardly a collapse within the party. But the contrast with the Democrats is striking. Some 35% of Democrats have an unfavorable view of their party, but virtually none of them are defecting and saying they like Trump.
How about looking to November’s midterm election? My Marquette Law School Poll has asked the generic ballot question only twice so far, in November and January. Here are those results.
Net support for the Democratic congressional candidate among Democrats is nearly identical regardless of how Democratic partisans feel about their party, with a net vote in the high 80s or low 90s in both November and January. Party disaffection doesn’t matter.
For Republicans though, disaffection does matter. Among contented Republicans who dislike the Democratic party, net loyalty is also around 90 points, a mirror image of Democrats. But in that sliver of 6% of Republicans who are favorable to the Democratic party, substantial vote support goes to the Democratic candidate, at least on the hypothetical generic ballot. That defection seems to have jumped in January, but caution is in order—this 6% of Republicans is a very small sample and the January movement could just be noise.
Independents give a somewhat firmer foundation. Those independents who are favorable to the Democratic party give Democratic candidates a substantial vote margin. But even those independents unfavorable to the Democratic party produce a net margin in favor of the Democratic candidate.
Lots of people, including me, have pointed to the poor favorability rating of the Democratic party relative to the Republican party this year but haven’t tried to explain how the more unpopular party can be outperforming their rival in elections. I think the solution is here. Democrats are disappointed with their party’s performance in Congress. If we switch from favorability to approval of how each congressional party is handling it’s job we get results virtually identical to these. Disappointment doesn’t produce defection because Democrats are united in their abhorrence of the Trump administration and the GOP. The disappointment comes from the inability of the congressional Democrats to do anything. That’s why the shutdown produced a brief embrace of the party. But when the congressional Democrats settled for an end to the shutdown, with little to show for it, disaffection returned.
So far the Democratic base is unified by the negative: they are deeply against Trump and the GOP Congress. They are joined by a majority of independents who also are supporting Democratic candidates, even if they dislike each party about equally.
So long as disappointment doesn’t produce defection, Democrats can win even if they are unusually grumpy about their party.
Plus party images, most important issues in new MULawPoll national survey
On Feb. 4 and 5 we released my latest Marquette Law School Poll national survey. The link to the full release, toplines, crosstabs and methodology are at the bottom of this post.
I’ll be posting a series of deeper dives on these results over the next week, each more narrowly focused but with more detail than the release is able to get into, so stay tuned. A quick look for now.
For new listeners, our national polls are released over two days. The first focuses on political topics while the second is devoted to topics related to the U.S. Supreme Court. (Thanks to SCOTUSblog’s newsletter for headlining our Court poll this morning.)
This poll was in the field Jan. 21-28, 2026, interviewing 1003 adults nationwide, with a margin of error of +/-3.4 percentage points. The poll was conducted after the killing of Renee Good. About 2/3rds of the interviews were completed before the killing of Alex Pretti, with 1/3rd after. Therefore, this poll reflects reaction to the Good shooting but does not fully reflect opinion following the Pretti shooting.
In headlines, we find 60% disapprove of the way ICE is handling immigration enforcement, 40% approve. Sixty-two percent say the shooting of Good was not justified, and 37% say it was justified. Of seven recent news events, attention to the Good shooting was the most followed, with 76% saying they had read or heard a lot about it.
On the other hand, support for deportations is virtually unchanged. We ask 2 questions, each to a separate half-sample:
Do you favor or oppose deporting immigrants who are living in the United States illegally back to their home countries?
And
Do you favor or oppose deporting immigrants who are living in the United States illegally back to their home countries even if they have lived here for a number of years, have jobs and no criminal record?
For the first item, with no qualifications, 56% favor deportations and 44% oppose them. That is down 2 points from 58%-42% in November. As for deportations of longtime residents with no criminal record, the numbers reverse, with 44% favoring such deportations and 56% opposed. That is unchanged from November.
Trump approval on immigration is 44% approve and 56% disapprove. That is slightly better than his overall job approval at 42% approve, 58% disapprove. Trump’s approval was at 41% approve, 58% disapprove in my September 2020 poll, shortly before his election loss to Joe Biden.
The generic congressional ballot finds a Democratic lead at 48% to 44% for Republicans among registered voters. That widens to 52% Democratic and 45% Republican among likely voters.
Looking at which party would do a better job on each of eight issues, Republicans are seen as better on four, Democrats better on two and two issues are essentially tied. Between 1/4th and 1/3rd of adults says there is no difference or neither party is good on the issue.
And what do people care the most about? Inflation, the economy, and immigration top the list, with significant concern for health care and Medicare and Social Security,
I’ll be back in the coming days with much more detail on these topics plus data centers, grocery and gasoline prices, the economy, and “who do you trust?” Stay tuned.
The full results, including press releases, toplines, crosstabs, the full instrument, and methodology are found at our website here. Note that entries are in reverse chronological order. The toplines and crosstabs under the Supreme Court release, “Court issues”, are complete, i.e. they include the political items also. Those under the “National issues” section do not include the Court items, which were held for the Court release. There are separate press releases for the Court and for National issues.
Trump’s approval is bad enough. No need to exaggerate.
It’s the one year mark of Trump’s second term and everyone is posting year in review pieces. Here is mine.
The chart shows how all presidents in the polling era have varied in approval over their entire terms, plus year 1 of Trump 2.0. The boxes cover the middle 50% of all polls, and the “whiskers” extend out to their all time highs and lows of approval in Gallup polls. The bar in the box is the median poll, the 50th percentile. I stick to Gallup for consistency over time and for their unmatched historical depth.
What jumps out is the approval ratings of the last four presidents have varied considerably less than those of their predecessors. Trump 1.0 has the least variation (smallest standard deviation) of any of the other 14 presidents, with 2.0 the second smallest, so far. Both Obama and Biden varied a little more, but considerably less than either Bushes, Clinton, or Reagan. Trump’s median in 1.0 ties with Truman for the lowest median approval, 39%. So far, Trump 2.0 is the 3rd lowest, at 40.5%. (Truman, by the way, set the record for all time low at 22%. Trump hasn’t come close, with a low of 33%, so far.)
This shrinkage of variation in approval is one consequence of polarization, leading the out-party since George W. Bush’s 2nd term to consistently give approval ratings below 10%, while the in-party gives high approval, typically in the 80s, no matter what. The poor independents are left to shift the balance a bit between two largely unmovable partisan camps. V.O. Key famously said voters were “a rational god of vengeance and reward”, but that breaks down when one side will never reward good performance and the other will never condemn bad outcomes. Trump may never approach the lows of Truman, Nixon, Carter or both Bushes, all of whom had low points in the 20s. But he will never approach the highs of Obama, Clinton or Reagan either.
Here is a more conventional look at approval of each of the elected presidents from the polling era. The trends here are smoothed trend estimates. Gallup now polls approval only once a month, so Trump 2.0 is not smoothed, just the raw polls. Also, Gallup hasn’t released the January results, so December is the most recent reading.
Trump 2.0 has run a little better than 1.0 in Gallup’s data. The December point at 36% is a bit of an outlier. The major polling averages put Trump’s approval between 40% and 42% as of Jan. 20, 2026.
An alternate view breaks out each president for readability. Here I’m showing raw poll results with no smoothing.
Here is my polling average for all Trump polls in 2025. My trend estimate is 41.4% approval. For comparison, FiftyPlusOne.news has it at 40.0%, SilverBulletin is 42.0%, NYTimes is 42.0% and RealClearPolitics is 42.4%.
You will note dips below the general downward trend in April after the tariff announcement, then a little recovery after backing off those original “liberation day” tariffs. Then the downward trend returns, until another dip during and after the government shutdown in October and November. A bit of a rise in early December after which the general downtrend returns. This is steady, nearly linear, decline with a couple of short-term wiggles.
I have a beef with headlines that shout “Trump at all time low” or “Approval cratering.” Those either cherry pick particularly low polls, or exaggerate small departures from the general downward trend. Trump’s approval is bad enough. Historically low for other presidents at the end of one year. But the message I read in this trend is a steady decline in approval for an unpopular president, signaling a challenging midterm, and with no sustained upturn in the last 12 months. No need to exaggerate the problems this poses for the White House or Republicans generally.
After a year in office, opinions about Donald Trump are a bit more complicated than merely “approve” or “disapprove.” Those who disapprove find almost nothing to like, but those who approve are likely to express mixed feelings, reporting things they dislike even if on balance they approve of the job he is doing as president.
For over a year my Marquette Law School Poll national surveys have asked a pair of open-ended questions in each poll:
What do you like about Donald Trump?
and
What do you dislike about Donald Trump?
Respondents can write as much or as little as they wish. The record is over 900 words. Much more common than full op-ed length answers are “everything” and “nothing”, in either order.
The pure-admiration and pure-hate answers can be short or long, but each give insights into how people think about Trump. Still, a substantial number of people have mixed feelings. Among Trump supporters it is common to see approval of his actions or policies coupled with disliking “how he talks” or “how he deals with people” or “the Epstein files.” It is less common to find those who disapprove of Trump seeing anything to like. If the substance of the dislikes goes to his policies then we see fewer finding positive things as well.
In a year of polling these questions, we have seen a notable trend. Respondents with mixed feelings, giving both likes and dislikes, have declined from 51% to 44%, while those who don’t like anything have climbed from 35% to 42%. And the true Trump fans, who only find something to like and nothing to dislike, have slightly declined from a high of 14% to 10%.
This gives a different perspective on Trump’s approval ratings, which have held between 40% and 42% in the current polling averages, down from the start of the second term but hardly “collapsing” as some suggest.
Among those who disapprove, few exhibit mixed feelings in the open-ended responses. They see nothing positive and vary primarily in the length and detail of their vitriol. The past year has grown this group of people, irreconcilably opposed to Trump.
We often think Trump’s base is rock solid. Approval among Republicans remains around 85% a year into Trump 2.0. But the open-ended responses suggest a more complicated story. Among his supporters, those who approve of the job he is doing, the substantial majority have mixed feelings in the open-ended answers. This does not forecast a collapse of his approval, but it does remind us that the caricature of his base as mindlessly in love is not accurate. So far, they like more than they dislike. But it is not because they are blind to the president’s shortcomings.
Time for a look back at the news of 2025 and what the public paid attention to and what it largely ignored. The year has not lacked for news, especially political news as Donald Trump expanded his authority through executive orders, followed by litigation over those orders.
My Marquette Law School Poll asks how much people have heard or read about recent events in the news in each poll:
Here are some recent topics in the news. How much have you heard or read about each of these?
Polls are conducted every other month, six times a year. This is not a comprehensive review of news events but provides a look at how much attention the public gave to a wide variety of mostly political news. Topics are picked from recent events that have received significant coverage and raise important political issues, with more emphasis on news stories published within a few weeks of each poll’s field dates.
Figure 1 shows the 32 topics asked about over the year.
The top topic of the year, by a substantial margin, is tariffs. The May survey came a month after Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement of tariffs on April 2 and the subsequent changes made in rates and implementation dates. Fully 81% of U.S. adults said they had heard or read a lot about the tariffs.
The second most attention went to Trump’s plans for deportation of immigrants in the U.S. illegally, with 70% hearing a lot about this in the first month of the administration. Subsequent items concerning immigration issues varied in visibility, with the mistaken deportation of a man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was sent to El Salvador in March ranking as the 7th most followed event, with 63% hearing a lot. When Garcia was returned to the U.S. in June, only 37% heard a lot about that, ranking 25th of 32 news items.
Cuts to the federal workforce ranked 3rd most followed story, with 67% hearing a lot as of May. Rounding out the top five news items were the war between Israel and Iran in June and the contentious meeting between Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on February 28th in the Oval Office. U.S. airstrikes on nuclear facilities in Iran ranked 6th.
At the bottom of the chart are Trump’s attempts to remove a member of the Federal Reserve Board and the firing of the director of the Centers for Disease Control, followed closely by 30% and 29% respectively.
If you follow politics enough to be reading this post you will probably to shocked that attention to the November elections for governor in New Jersey and Virginia ranks 31st of 32 events, with only 28% hearing a lot about this. For us political junkies, it is a reminder that much of the public doesn’t follow politics closely, and especially not elections in states other than their own.
The honor of being the least followed of the 32 stories is Trump’s extended diplomatic trip to Asia in late October, during the shutdown of the federal government, with only 24% who paid a lot of attention to that trip.
Attention to news by party
Figure 2 shows attention to these news topics by party. A higher percentage of Democrats than Republicans say they have read or heard a lot about most of the news events covered during 2025. By comparison to either party, independents are considerably less likely to have followed news across every item.
Highly visible events receive more attention across all partisan lines while more obscure events are also followed less by each party group. The correlation of attention for Democrats and Republicans is .78. Independent attention correlates with Democratic attention at .91, and with Republican attention at .85. In short, news tends to penetrate each partisan group in similar ways though with generally lower attention from Republicans and especially independents.
Republican vs Democratic attention to news
Figure 3 shows the attention gap between Republicans and Democrats across the 32 topics, arranged by size of the difference between Republican and Democratic attention. For the news items we asked about, Democrats say they have heard or read more than do Republicans for 24 items, Republicans more for 5 items and the parties are tied for 3 items.
It is notable that the items with greater attention from Republicans are closely tied to Trump. Attention to his inaugural address shows the largest Republican advantage over Democrats in attention, 27-percentage points, followed by Trump’s speech to a joint session of Congress (don’t call it a State of the Union address) with an 11-point GOP lead in attention. Other topics with a Republican advantage closely concern Trump–the cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas and the U.S. airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
At the opposite end of the partisan attention gap, Democrats paid much more attention to the “No Kings” protests in October, by 23-points, and to a measles outbreak in Texas and New Mexico in the winter by 20-points. Democrats also paid substantially more attention than Republicans to the firing of the CDC director and reductions in the federal workforce.
Perhaps surprisingly, Democrats paid considerably more attention in September to the potential release of the Jeffrey Epstein files than did Republicans, by 16-points. (This does not cover the actual release of the files in December, after our final poll of 2025 in November.) Coverage of this issue has emphasized pressure from Republicans and MAGA activists for the release, though Democrats also supported the law to require the files to be made public.
This invites the question of whether Democrats simply pay more attention to politics than do Republicans.
In fact, attention to politics is virtually identical for Republicans and Democrats, while independents are much less attentive in general. We ask
Some people seem to follow what’s going on in politics most of the time, whether there’s an election going on or not. Others aren’t that interested. How often do you follow what’s going on in politics…?
Forty-nine percent of Democrats say they follow politics most of the time, as do 48% of Republicans, a trivial difference. In contrast, only 26% of independents say they follow politics most of the time. The lower attention from independents is reflected in their notably lower levels of attention to news events, but this can’t account for Republican and Democratic differences across news items. Table 1 shows attention to politics by partisanship in 2025 surveys.
One plausible explanation is that partisans follow different news sources, and those sources give different emphasis to specific news events. I don’t have data on the actual content of various news sources, but in my data there are only small (typically 3-4 point differences) in awareness of news events between Republicans who follow only conservative news sources and those who follow a mix of conservative and liberal sources, and a similarly small difference for Democrats who follow only liberal sources versus a mix of liberal and conservative sources. This casts some doubt on the idea that it is differences in content that drives differential awareness, and suggests that partisanship has more to do with what news people pay attention to, and remember. More on this in a future post.
The data tables
For those who want to see the numbers in detail here you go. Table 2 shows those who heard or read a lot, a little and nothing at all for each news event. While there is some variation, the most prominent news items have high “heard a lot” and low “nothing at all”, and the less prominent items reverse this.
Table 3 shows high attention to news by party identification.
Contrasting takes on religion and the young. There have been a number of stories like this Washington Post piece with vivid and interesting examples of 20-somethings embracing religion. (Link should allow door through the paywall.) https://wapo.st/3KltFEh
The newspaper stories aren’t misleading about specific cases. Obviously individual local churches may be growing and flourishing even as the national picture is one of stability or decline. But it is a reminder that there is pressure to generalize from specific instances to broad generalizations. Caution and perspective are helpful.
They say there are no second acts in politics. In Wisconsin that has been the case for the last 27 years, at least when it comes to statewide contests for governor and U.S. Senate. Mandela Barnes’ entry in the 2026 governor’s race will attempt to break the dismal recent record.
Consider the examples of Tom Barrett (lost governor’s races in 2010 and 2012), Tim Michels (lost Senate race in 2004 and lost governor’s race in 2022), Russ Feingold (lost Senate races in 2010 and 2016), Eric Hovde (lost GOP primary for Senate in 2012, lost Senate race in 2024), and Mark Neumann (lost Senate race in 1998, lost GOP primary for governor in 2010 and lost GOP primary for Senate in 2012). Even Tommy Thompson, who won four races for governor, fell short 14 years later in his 2012 bid for the Senate. You have to go back to the 1970s to find a successful second act in Wisconsin statewide elections.
What does this record say about Barnes’ position in the 2026 race for governor? There are some advantages that are important. He will likely start out as the best known candidate in a field of some 7 or 8 candidates. In my Marquette Law School Poll of Wisconsin, Oct. 15-22, the three best known Democrats had name identification ranging from 22% (Hong) to 25% (Rodriguez) to 26% (Crowley), with the rest in the teens. Barnes was not included as he had not entered the race. At the end of his 2022 Senate race, Barnes had a name ID of 85%, though when he started that race as the sitting Lt. Governor his ID rate was 37% in Feb. 2022. There is falloff in ID between races. Barrett finished his 2010 governor’s race with 84% name recognition, which fell to 61% in Jan. 2012 at the start of the recall election. Feingold fell from 95% in 2010 to 75% in Jan. 2016.
In two recent polls that included his name (though unannounced at the time) Barnes was ahead in the Democratic primary field with 16% support in a Sept. 28-30 poll sponsored by Platform Communications and ahead with 21% in a TIPP poll conducted Nov. 17-21. In both polls all other candidates were below 10%, with a third to half of voters undecided. Those polls didn’t measure name recognition.
Barnes also has the advantage of having raised substantial money in his 2022 Senate bid, giving him a donor list to tap that none of the other candidates have.
Those are positive elements for Barnes and each gives him an initial advantage some eight months ahead of the primary.
The reason for doubt is the track record of candidates running statewide following a previous statewide loss. The second time around has not shown much improvement in general election vote percentage (though each won their second round primaries, except for Neumann).
Name ID
Repeat candidates begin their second races with lower name ID than when they finished their first race, with slippage of about 20 points for Barrett and Feingold. Hovde began both races with very low name ID. All ended their second races with high name ID, though Feingold didn’t quite reach the high levels he had in 2010.
Barnes began his 2022 Senate race with a name ID rate in the mid-30s, rising to the mid-80s. We don’t yet know how much that has declined since 2022.
The chart shows the changes in name ID across the year leading up to each election. There is need to rebuild name recognition in the second act, but candidates largely succeed in doing so, and start with a higher level than first time candidates.
Net favorable ratings
Each of these candidates has suffered declines in net favorability across their elections. Decline late in the campaign is apparent for each candidate. Feingold stands out for having net positive favorability in both races he lost. The others all ended in negative territory, with Barrett and Hovde more net negative in their second races than in their first. Feingold’s first and second are about equal.
Bottom line
We don’t know how the next eight months until the primary, and eleven months to the general election, will unfold. What these past second acts have shown in that initial advantages in name ID and campaign experience, including established donors, have not produced success in the second campaigns over the past quarter of a century. Barnes now has the chance to change that somewhat daunting record.
President Trump’s approval has declined in October and November, after holding pretty steady July-Sept. There was steady decline Jan-Mar, then a sharper fall after announcing tariffs in April. Approval rose in May after backing off on tariffs. Then a small decline in June. Current decline is across most pollsters.
Gallup November Trump approval: 36% approve, 60% disapprove, a 5 point drop in approval and 6 point increase in disapproval since Oct. Several points below my approval trend across all polls which puts approval at 40.5%, disapproval at 56.1%
