(MADISON, Wis.) Four months into the new Trump presidency, a new University of Wisconsin-Madison survey report finds surprising insights on how Americans think about Trump’s first 100 days. The analysis goes beyond similar recent reports by assessing how individuals’ media diets relate to these views and by re-interviewing people we surveyed before the 2024 election for over-time comparisons.
Most Americans report being at least somewhat familiar with Trump’s major actions, ranging from 62% to 85% across the 10 actions we queried – deportations, tariffs, attempts to end birthright citizenship, impoundment of funds appropriated by Congress, cuts to Ukraine funding, data access to “DOGE” workers, anti-“DEI” bans, canceling university research grants, and federal workforce cuts.
None of those policies has majority support. The least supported involves funding cuts to universities (32%). Deportation has 49% support and Ukraine cuts 41%. The rest have under 40% support.
Democrats are fairly united in their opposition to the policies, while Republicans’ views vary considerably.
Therefore, we also assess how the views of Republicans in partisan media echo chambers differ from Republicans who regularly consume mainstream news.
Republicans who regularly consumed rightwing media were more aware of Trump actions than Republicans who regularly consumed mainstream news only. They were also far more likely to support Trump’s policy actions and to perceive the economy and their own personal finances as much better than a year before.
The Spring 2025 Wisconsin Communication & Elections Study interviewed a demographically weighted representative opt-in sample of 2,000 voting eligible American adults, fielded online by YouGov from April to May 15, 2025. The survey included 1,028 participants interviewed in our October 2024 survey, plus a fresh supplement of 972 new respondents to maintain representativeness. A team of UW-Madison faculty, grad students, and staff affiliated with the Center for Communication and Civic Renewal (CCCR) developed dozens of questions, led by CCCR’s Faculty Director Dr. Michael Wagner.
Dr. Michael Wagner, who is also the William T. Evjue Distinguished Chair for the Wisconsin Idea in the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication, noted how the results highlight the importance of people’s information diets in a democracy. “People often describe our politics as one in which Republicans simply think what other Republicans think and Democrats have to behave in the same way, but in the opposite direction. If that’s true, persuasion is impossible. Our study shows that people really do have different attitudes than other people in their own party when they choose to learn about politics from different news sources,” Wagner said.
“Most Americans do not support the Trump administration’s rollout of policy changes, even as most Republican partisan do, showing how deeply polarized our country is,” said Dr. Dhavan Shah, McLeod Professor of Communication Research and Research Director for the Center for Communication and Civic Renewal at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The survey also provides insights on economic perceptions. The public judges the economy very negatively under Trump, with 61% saying its worse than a year ago compared to just 13% saying it was better. Since last October, Republicans and Democrats have swapped positions on economic evaluations to align them with the change in presidential partisanship – a form of partisan cheerleading, but also a recognition among Democrats that Trump’s policies substantially harm the economy. Partisan differences are smaller but still sizable for self-reports of personal finances.
Finally, we find many public policy views and trust in governing institutions largely unchanged. Partisan policy disagreement is highest on Obamacare (61 points), abortion (45 points), while disagreement was smallest on gun background checks and legalizing marijuana (around 25 points). Republicans trust police and military most, while Democrats trust colleges and labor unions most. Few of any group trust Congress.
Although non-probability samples do not have traditional margins of error, percentages from the full sample have a virtual margin of error of +/- 2 percentage points for estimates near 50%, with smaller margins for estimates as they move toward 0% or 100%. Estimates for Democrats in the two states have margins of error of +/- 3 percentage points, and estimates for Republicans are +/- 3 percentage points.
The research team also fielded a Midwest-focused survey with many of the same questions, and they will be fielding another survey in Fall 2025 for additional insights, all for later reports and scholarly work.
The survey was supported by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which advances research on the intersections of media and democracy.
About the Center for Communication & Civic Renewal
The Center for Communication & Civic Renewal (CCCR) is an interdisciplinary research team housed in the School of Journalism & Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. CCCR’s research aims to understand Wisconsin public opinion and the state’s broad political communication ecology, drawing upon frameworks and methods foundations in communication, political science, sociology, psychology, and computer science. Dr. Michael Wagner leads the Center as Faculty Director, Dr. Dhavan Shah is the Center’s Research Director, and Dr. Nathan Kalmoe serves as Executive Administrative Director for the Center.
The Center’s public opinion polling is one of three analytical components in its broader efforts studying political communication in Wisconsin, the Midwest, and beyond. Over the years, we have also conducted in-depth interviews with hundreds of citizens throughout the state to understand how they’re talking and thinking about politics. And we have conducted large-scale computational analyses of social media and news media content throughout the Wisconsin, the United Stares, and the world.
CCCR’s past research is synthesized in the book, Battleground: Asymmetric Communication Ecologies and the Erosion of Civil Society in Wisconsin, published by Cambridge University Press in 2022, along with several peer-reviewed articles published in academic journals, and public-facing essays published in national news outlets including the Washington Post, Vox, and TechStream as well as local outlets like the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the Capital Times, and the Wisconsin State Journal
The Center’s January 2025 report, “The American Voter in 2024,” analyzed a large national pre-election public opinion survey to investigate partisan agreement and division in attitudes, behaviors, and media consumption patterns that determined pivotal election outcomes. We examine party loyalty, identity group attitudes and prejudices, economic perceptions and experiences, foreign policy attitudes, and partisan news diets.