What They Told Us: Reviewing Last Week’s Key Polls - Week Ending April 29, 2017

Today marks the 100th day of Donald Trump’s presidency. It’s an unofficial and somewhat arbitrary marker held over from the FDR presidency, but one the media and presidential administrations fixate on nonetheless.

Only 29% of Likely U.S. Voters believe Trump’s first 100 days have been a success. Forty-five percent (45%) view his first months in office as a failure, while 25% rate them as somewhere in between. But a closer look finds that 57% of Republicans think Trump’s first 100 days have been successful versus 72% of Democrats who regard them as a failure. Among voters not affiliated with either major party, 23% say the president’s first 100 days have been a success, 43% a failure.

Democrats are also unhappy with their own party’s attempts to oppose Trump in his first 100 days.

Trump’s job approval rating in Rasmussen Reports’ Daily Presidential Tracking Poll has ranged from a high of 59% shortly after his January 20 inauguration to a low of 43% in early April. By comparison, President Obama’s daily approval rating was running in the mid-50s at this early stage of his presidency.

Forty-two percent (42%) of voters said the country is heading in the right direction for the week ending April 20. Prior to the previous week, this number had been dropping steadily to new lows for the Trump administration from the mid-40s for the previous four weeks. 

President Trump's signing of the “Buy American, Hire American” executive order was one of the most popular actions he's taken since being in office. Still, his opponents and many in the media are questioning if the president is being hypocritical in this regard, considering that some of his own corporate products are not made in the United States. That’s the topic of this week’s Rasmussen Minute.

It’s no wonder that President Trump is talking about major cuts in the size and reach of the feds. Just 26% trust the federal government to do the right thing most of the time. 

Following a spate of violent murders in Long Island suspected to be at the hands of the MS-13 street gang, Attorney General Jeff Sessions pushed for labeling the gang as a terrorist organization in an effort to crack down on illegal immigration. Voters support the move, but aren’t so convinced it will cut down on violent crime in the United States. 

The United States dropped their biggest non-nuclear bomb on an ISIS camp in Afghanistan earlier this month, and while nearly half of voters still see the Middle East nation as a national security interest, they’re not convinced the situation there is likely to change.

Most Americans worry that France is losing the fight against radical Islamic terrorism and think the United States and the rest of the world needs to get involved to help turn the tide.

Americans doubt that Europe can ever completely defeat the scourge of terrorism, and many have changed their travel plans accordingly. 

In other surveys last week:

-- On Monday, Arkansas conducted the nation’s first double execution since 2000. Most Americans still support the death penalty, although only 35% think it actually helps to deter crime.

-- Gun sales in the United States are down since Trump took office even though Americans now think it’s easier to get a gun than it used to be. 

-- A radio host recently claimed Senator Bernie Sanders is the most popular politician in America today and would have defeated Trump by a landslide in the presidential election had he been the Democratic nominee. The independent Senator ran on a Democratic socialist platform, but despite his political popularity, voters don’t share his economic views.

-- With Earth Day just behind us and Arbor Day ahead, most voters think the environment in this country is doing well. 

Visit the Rasmussen Reports home page for the latest current polling coverage of events in the news. The page is updated several times each day.

Remember, if it's in the news, it's in our polls.