57% of Democrats Want Trump to Succeed

Even most Democrats want Donald Trump to succeed as president, but voters are far less confident that things will play out that way.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 39% of Likely U.S. Voters think Trump’s presidency is more likely to be a success. Thirty percent (30%) say it’s more likely to be a failure instead, while 26% believe the Trump presidency will fall somewhere in between the two. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Sixty-seven percent (67%) of Republicans think Trump is likely to succeed, a view shared by only 17% of Democrats and 35% of voters not affiliated with either major party. Just over half (52%) of Democrats believe Trump is more likely to fail, but only seven percent (7%) of GOP voters and 28% of unaffiliateds agree.

But 57% of Democrats want Trump’s presidency to be a success. Of course, that compares to 91% of Republicans and 73% of unaffiliated voters. Twenty-six percent (26%) of voters in Hillary Clinton’s party want Trump to fail, while another 17% are undecided.

Among all voters, 73% want Trump’s presidency to be a success; 14% want it to fail, and 12% are not sure.  

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The national survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on January 3-4, 2017 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Fifty-four percent (54%) of voters think major legislation to improve the country is likely to be passed during Trump’s first 100 days in office.That compares to 63% who felt that way about Barack Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress just before he became president in January 2009. 

Among voters who want Trump’s presidency to be a success, 53% say it’s likely to achieve that goal. Eighty-eight percent (88%) of voters who want Trump to fail believe he’s more likely to do so.

Men want Trump to succeed more than women do and are more confident that he will. Middle-aged voters are slightly more skeptical about his chances of success than others are.

Blacks think he is much less likely to succeed than whites and other minority voters.

Only 17% of voters who Strongly Approve of the job President Obama is doing believe Trump is more likely to be a success. Among voters who Strongly Disapprove of the current president’s job performance, 78% expect Trump to succeed.

Just over half of all voters now view Trump favorably, his high to date, although strong negative opinions still outweigh strong positive ones.

Trump in a TV interview shortly after Election Day made it clear that repealing and replacing Obamacare and filling the long-standing vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court are high on his list of action items, and voters think that’s a good place to start.

Most voters think Democrats should work with Trump once he’s in the White House, but Democrats strongly disagree. Still, voters are more hopeful about the parties cooperating than they’ve been since Obama’s inauguration in 2009.

Following Trump's election, voters are more optimistic about the future than they have been in over four years.

With Republicans set to control both Congress and the White House, more voters than ever are expecting significant cuts in government spending.

A majority of voters have said for years that spending cuts help the economy. Americans are much more optimistic about their personal financial future than they were a year ago.

Additional information from this survey and a full demographic breakdown are available to Platinum Members only.

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