Daniel W. Drezner - Donald Trump's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Polling Days

And why it's likely to get worse from here.

Daniel W. Drezner
Apr 27, 2025

One of my 2025 life hacks is not paying too much attention to internecine debates about how to oppose Donald Trump. Oppose him on principle about everything or oppose him with a measured, focused rage on issues where he is the most politically vulnerable? I get the arguments that both sides make on this, and I find myself toggling between both perspectives. Mostly, however, I recognize that this is not my bailiwick. So I pick and choose where my own opposition to Trump and his ilk makes the most sense and go from there.

This past month’s polling, however, set up an interesting short-term debate on this question with some long-term implications for Trump and the United States.

The Trump administration’s illegal deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador — and the government’s acknowledgment that this was due to “administrative error” — caused a split among opposition politicians and pundits about how to respond. The initial response among those paying attention was outrage over the Trump administration’s cruelty and disregard for the rule of law.

California governor and amateur podcaster Gavin Newsom initially dismissed the Abrego Garcia case as a “distraction,” however — and some other Democrats felt likewise. Pundits like Matthew Yglesias and Nate Silver similarly argued that voters by and large supported Trump’s approach to immigration, thereby making the Abrego Garcia case a losing one. As Silver wrote, “even if Abrego Garcia’s case is really about democracy — due process, and the separation of powers rather than about immigration per se — I’m not sure that’s a winning issue for the anti-Trump coalition…. in Abrego Garcia’s case, I’m not sure that voters actually will become more sympathetic to Democrats if they spend more time studying it.” Both Yglesias and Silver observed that the secular decline in Trump’s polling seemed to stall out the week Democrats focused on Abrego Garcia.

Other Democrats like Senator Chris Van Hollen rejected this argument:


(click image to watch video on BlueSky)

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