Young Americans sour on congressional Democrats, new poll finds

Fewer than one in three young Americans approve of the job President Donald Trump and Congress are doing, according to a new national poll from the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics.

But while the approval ratings for Trump and congressional Republicans have mostly stayed consistent since the start of the president’s first administration eight years ago, the 50th Harvard Youth Poll indicates that approval ratings for Democrats in Congress among Americans aged 18-29 have nosedived.

According to Harvard’s annual spring survey, which was conducted March 14-25 and released on Wednesday, the approval rating for congressional Democrats stands at 23%, down from 42% in the spring of 2017 at the start of Trump’s first term.

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House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., right, is joined by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., for a press conference at the Capitol on Feb. 12, 2025. A new poll suggests congressional Democrats’ approval ratings have plunged. (AP/Rod Lamkey Jr.)

“In that same period, approval of Congressional Republicans has held steady, inching up slightly from 28% to 29%,” the poll’s release notes.

And the approval rating for Trump, who next week marks 100 days into his second tour of duty in the White House, stands at 31% in the new survey. 

AMERICANS WEIGH IN ON TRUMP’S TEASING OF A THIRD TERM

The release highlights that Trump’s numbers are “virtually unchanged from the 32% reported in Spring 2017 and the 29% recorded in Fall 2020.”

President Donald Trump speaks to reporters on Air Force One on April 12, 2025. (Pool via AP)

Harvard’s survey is the latest to indicate troubling numbers for the Democrats. 

The confidence rating for Democrat leadership in Congress stood at a record-low 25% in a Gallup poll conducted April 1-14 and released last week. That’s nine points below the previous low of 34%, which was recorded in 2023.

Fueling the drop in confidence in the Democrat congressional leadership was a 41-point plunge among Democrats questioned in the Gallup survey.

DEMOCRATS FAVORABLE RATINGS DROP TO RECORD LOWS

National polls conducted in February by Quinnipiac University, and last month by CNN and by NBC News, indicated the favorable ratings for the Democratic Party sinking to all-time lows.

The Democratic Party is in the political wilderness after November’s election setbacks, when Republicans won back control of the White House and the Senate and defended their fragile House majority. And Republicans made gains among Black and Hispanic voters as well as younger voters, all traditional members of the Democratic Party’s base.

The Democrats held their 2024 national nominating convention at the United Center in Chicago. (Fox News – Paul Steinhauser)

Democrats have become increasingly angry and energized in response to Trump’s aggressive and controversial moves in slashing the federal government and upending long-standing national since returning to the White House three months ago.

That anger is directed not only at Trump and Republicans but also at Democrats. Many in the party’s base feel their leaders in Congress haven’t been effective or vocal enough in pushing back against the president.

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According to the Harvard poll, only 15% say the country is headed in the right direction, with just over half (51%) saying the country’s on the wrong track. 

And just one in four surveyed said the current state of the country is better now under Trump than it was during former President Joe Biden’s single four-year term in the White House.

Forty-one percent said things were better off under Biden, with 14% saying they see no difference and 17% unsure.