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A new poll found the public is sympathetic to the president-elect’s plans to deport migrants and reduce America’s presence overseas.
Jeremy W. Peters and Ruth Igielnik
Jeremy Peters and Ruth Igielnik wrote the questions for a poll of 2,128 Americans and analyzed the results for this article.
Many Americans who otherwise dislike President-elect Donald J. Trump share his bleak assessment of the country’s problems and support some of his most contentious prescriptions to fix them, according to a new poll from The New York Times and Ipsos.
A little more than half of the country expresses some desire to see Mr. Trump follow through with his harshest threat to deal with illegal immigration: deporting everyone living in the United States without authorization.
Which of the following comes closest to your opinion about our nation’s political system, even if none are exactly right?
Note: The gray segment refers to the share of adults who did not respond or said they didn’t know. Democrats and Republicans include those who identified with or leaned toward each party.
Based on a poll by The New York Times and Ipsos of 2,128 U.S. adults conducted from Jan. 2 to 10.
By June Kim
The poll, which surveyed 2,128 adults from Jan. 2 to 10, found that 55 percent of Americans either strongly or somewhat support such mass deportations.
Americans are more evenly split on whether Mr. Trump should implement tariffs on countries like China and Mexico, which he has vowed to do as a way to reduce reliance on foreign goods. Still, 46 percent say that trade with foreign nations should be subject to increased tariffs.
And a large majority is sympathetic to efforts to strictly limit how doctors can treat children struggling with their gender identity — an issue Mr. Trump and other Republicans made central to their campaigns for office. Seventy-one percent said that no one under 18 should be prescribed puberty-blocking drugs or hormones. The Supreme Court is expected to issue a decision on the matter later this year.
The poll tells the story of a country turning inward, where people are more aligned with Mr. Trump’s “America First” agenda than they were during his first term in office.
For a political figure so divisive — Americans view him more negatively than any other president about to take office in the last 70 years — the level of support for his ideas is striking. Most Americans say the United States has ignored serious problems at home while entangling itself in costly conflicts abroad, the poll found. A majority believe the government is sending too much money to Ukraine. And many are expressing less tolerance of immigrants overall.
“Something needs to happen on immigration,” said Jose Hernandez, 48, of Atlanta, who works with a hotel chain on new projects. “I’m an immigrant myself, from Mexico, but I waited 25 years. I came to this country legally.” He added, “There’s no control over the system.”
Mr. Hernandez said he voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joseph R. Biden in 2020, and considers himself aligned with Democrats on social justice. But in 2024, he supported Mr. Trump as more of a vote “against Kamala” than anything else, he explained.
Though Mr. Hernandez said he does not want to see mass deportation, he described the current situation at the border as “unsustainable.”
“We establish rules and guidelines. When you’re not following those rules, that’s it,” he said.
Mr. Trump has vowed to carry out the largest deportation operation in American history. And the public is with him, to a point.
Do you support or oppose each of the following:
Notes: The gray segment refers to the share of adults who did not respond or said they didn’t know. “Support” includes the responses “somewhat support” and “strongly support,” and “oppose” includes the responses “somewhat oppose” and “strongly oppose.” The wording of the poll question and response options has been modified for clarity.
Based on a poll by The New York Times and Ipsos of 2,128 U.S. adults conducted from Jan. 2 to 10.
By June Kim
A vast majority of Americans — 87 percent — support deporting undocumented immigrants with a criminal record, which Mr. Trump has said would be one of the first orders of business he carries out.
Nearly two-thirds of all Americans — including 54 percent of Hispanics and 44 percent of Democrats — support deporting people who entered the country illegally during the last four years of the Biden administration, after it reversed many of Mr. Trump’s immigration restrictions from his first term. In that time, legal and illegal immigration soared to the highest levels in U.S. history.
A slim majority — 56 percent — said they believe that immigrants strengthen the country. About 41 percent agreed with the statement “immigrants today are a burden on our country.” That sentiment had subsided over the last decade, according to several public polls, but now appears to be rising.
The undocumented population was 11 million people in 2022, according to the latest government estimates. Demographers agree that the current number is higher, between 13 million and 14 million.
Americans are also eager to see their country less enmeshed in world affairs. Asked if it was better for the United States to be active in world affairs or, instead, to concentrate less on problems overseas and pay more attention to issues at home, 60 percent of Americans prefer less foreign engagement, according to the poll.
As recently as 2019, a smaller share of Americans expressed a desire to pull back from international affairs, splitting about 50-50 on the question, according to Pew Research Center.
The Ipsos survey, conducted for The New York Times, aimed to measure support for specific policy proposals Mr. Trump said he would implement if elected. It also surveyed public sentiment on a range of issues that have been the subject of partisan disagreement, from the scope of presidential power to programs designed to promote diversity.
The country remains deeply divided over Mr. Trump, the poll found, despite his inflated claims of winning “a powerful and unprecedented mandate.” Roughly the same share of people told The Times that they are worried or pessimistic about the next four years as excited or optimistic. His favorability rating, according to an average of polls from the website FiveThirtyEight, has hovered just below 50 percent lately. That matches his share of the popular vote in 2024.
Americans are far from willing to give Mr. Trump carte blanche. For instance, even though most people expect he will use the government to investigate and prosecute his political opponents, a vast majority of Americans do not want him to. That includes a majority of Republicans.
Overall, 73 percent of Americans say they oppose the idea of Mr. Trump pursuing legal charges against his adversaries — with 49 percent saying they are strongly opposed.
Mr. Trump would also lack majority support to eliminate the constitutional guarantee to citizenship for anyone born on American soil, the poll found.
The poll also revealed that Americans hold their government in exceedingly low esteem — far lower than during the Watergate era. Majorities across races, genders and partisan stripe say the political system is broken and that the economy works against them — a pessimism that tracks with some of Mr. Trump’s grimmer rhetoric.
There is a widespread belief, across parties, that Washington is corrupt, with two-thirds of Democrats and 80 percent of Republicans saying the government serves itself and the powerful over ordinary people. Two-thirds of Americans say the economic system unfairly favors the wealthy.
In interviews, respondents to the poll reflected the foul mood of the country.
“So many elected officials have the service of their constituencies at the bottom,” said Tarra Williams, 49, a compliance manager in Mooresville, N.C., who said she voted for Vice President Kamala Harris.
Ms. Williams said she did not trust Republicans, Democrats or the federal government. “The whole country is on cognitive dissonance autopilot,” she said. “We need a whole governmental reboot.”
Among some Democrats, there was a certain ambivalence about Mr. Trump’s second inauguration.
“I don’t think Trump becoming president is a good or bad thing,” said Booker Preston, 50, a mechanic in Fort Worth, Texas, who said he voted for Ms. Harris. Perhaps, he suggested, the government might spend some of the money it sends abroad tackling problems at home.
“I really feel that we spend a lot of money overseas that we might not be able to recoup — nor do we get enough benefits to offset,” he said. “We could spend those billions of dollars here to really help people here.”
Mr. Trump’s promise to do a better job managing inflation and the economy persuaded many voters. More Americans expect that Mr. Trump’s policies will help rather than hurt the economy. Even among Democrats, about one-third say he will help the economy or, at least, not make much of a difference.
Americans were mixed on whether Mr. Trump would be able to make good on some of those economic promises. Most Republicans expect that prices will go down during Mr. Trump’s tenure; most Democrats expect they will not.
But Americans largely expect him to follow through on what he said he would do. Nearly unanimously, and across parties, majorities said they thought he was likely to carry out mass deportations and that he would raise tariffs on China and Mexico.
Thinking about some of the things that Donald Trump has suggested he might do while in office, how likely do you think it is that he will try to do each of the following over the next four years?
Notes: The gray segment refers to the share of adults who did not respond or said they didn’t know. “Likely” includes the responses “somewhat likely” and “very likely,” and “not likely” includes the responses “not too likely” and “not at all likely.”
Based on a poll by The New York Times and Ipsos of 2,128 U.S. adults conducted from Jan. 2 to 10.
By June Kim
A slightly narrower majority of Americans expect that Mr. Trump would involve the country in fewer wars. Republicans are about twice as likely to expect this as Democrats.
Like it or not, Mr. Trump did not begin any major wars, said Tim Malsbary, 56, a nurse in Cincinnati, who said he voted for Mr. Trump this election but used to consider himself a Democrat.
“The Democratic Party has made me bitter,” he added.
Though the issue of rights for gay and transgender people ranks far down most Americans’ list of priorities — only 4 percent cited it as one of their most important issues — Republicans have focused on it heavily. And Mr. Trump, who ran attention-grabbing ads attacking Ms. Harris as a radical on the issue, appears to have been more in sync with public sentiment.
The survey found, for instance, that just 18 percent of Americans believe transgender female athletes — those who were male at birth — should be allowed to compete in women’s sports. Nearly 80 percent say they should not.
On social issues, Republicans have also gone after attempts to increase racial diversity. When it comes to such efforts in schools and government agencies, Americans are evenly divided, with 48 percent saying they want to end such programs and 47 percent who want to keep them.
About 22 percent of Black Americans and 40 percent of Hispanic Americans support ending these programs.
Still, as polarizing as many Americans find Mr. Trump, some are withholding judgment.
Ali Romero, 43, of Moab, Utah, said she found it difficult to support some of Mr. Trump’s decisions on things like reproductive rights and social justice. But she did not see Ms. Harris as a compelling alternative, even though she leans Democratic.
“So instead of voting for someone and feeling not great about it,” she said, “I voted for nobody and I feel great about it.”
At the very least, a Trump presidency will be different, she said. “It’s not the status quo.”
Christine Zhang contributed.
Here are the key things to know about this poll from The New York Times and Ipsos:
2,128 Americans were surveyed nationwide from Jan. 2 to 10, 2025.
The poll was conducted using the KnowledgePanel, a probability-based web panel hosted by Ipsos. You can see the exact questions that were asked and the order in which they were asked here.
The sample was drawn from KnowledgePanel, which is recruited using address-based sampling to ensure representative coverage of the entire United States. Americans were then selected for this survey out of that panel.
The margin of sampling error among all Americans is about plus or minus 2.6 percentage points. In theory, this means that the results should reflect the views of the overall population most of the time, though many other challenges create additional sources of error.
You can see full results and a detailed methodology here. You can view the cross tabs here.
Jeremy W. Peters is a Times reporter who covers debates over free expression and how they impact higher education and other vital American institutions. More about Jeremy W. Peters
Ruth Igielnik is a Times polling editor who conducts polls and analyzes and reports on the results. More about Ruth Igielnik
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Buying Greenland: Ken Howery, a close friend of Elon Musk and Trump’s pick for ambassador to Denmark, is expected to be central to what the president-elect hopes will be a real-estate deal of epic proportions.
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Cybersecurity Rules: President Biden issued an executive order requiring software companies selling their product to the federal government to prove they included ironclad security features. It may run afoul of Trump’s vow to deregulate.
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