Nate Cohn

Donald Trump entered office with relatively broad support among the American people.

He won the popular vote, albeit narrowly, but he won the popular vote nonetheless.

And voters were optimistic, or at least hopeful, that he would return the economy back to something like the pre-pandemic normal, the economy we had when he was president the first time around.

His approval rating as he entered office was in the 50s.

These are really strong numbers for him.

Usually Donald Trump had approval ratings in the low 40s or even the 30s.

So as Donald Trump entered office, he entered with a much broader coalition, with an electorate that was much more hopeful about what a second term for President Trump might look like.

They thought he might get the border under control and reduce crime.

And he also entered as a kind of cultural phenomenon in a way that he hadn't previously.

You might remember there was talk of a conservative vibe shift in the culture a year ago.

Yeah, Trump made enormous gains in 2024 among young, non-white, less educated, lower income voters.

Voters who traditionally had voted for Democrats and who Democrats had often taken for granted.

That's right.

We've just finished a national poll one year into Donald Trump's term, and it does not look like the polls did a year ago or like the polls did in the run-up to his victory in 2024.

His approval rating is at 40%.

That's down considerably from the 48% favorability rating he had heading into the election, let alone the majority support that he had when he entered office.

And importantly, those big demographic shifts that we saw in the 2024 election, they have mostly reversed.

Young, non-white, lower income, less engaged voters, they have gone from being his relative strong points to, again, looking much weaker for him.

In fact, in almost every respect, it looks like a poll that you could have done during Trump's first term.

Now, as you pointed out, this does sort of answer this longstanding question about what happened in the 2024 election.