This is how unfavorable views of Trump have changed

Donald Trump is one the most polarizing figures in modern American politics and there are a lot of facts to back that statement up. Some of the best information on the former president's popularity with the American people in recent years comes from The Pew Research Center.

On March 19th, 2024, Pew published its latest results on Joe Biden and the former president's favorability now that the two men have enough primary delegates to be confirmed as the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates. But the data revealed something quite interesting about Trump.

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It turns out the former president's favorability ratings have remained pretty much unchanged since Pew's 2022 and 2023 polling on the same topic. Overall, Trump had a 60% unfavorable rating and a 39% favourbale in 2024 among those surveyed by the market research company between February 13th and the 25th.

"Trump’s ratings are largely the same as they were in 2022. However, they are somewhat less negative than in 2023, as Republicans’ views have grown more positive," Pew's Shanay Garcia and Hannah Hartig explained. But what accounted for Trump's slight dip in popularity in 2023?

As of March 2024, 74% of Republicans and Republican-leaning voters stated that they had a favorable view of the former president, which was up quite a bit from the 66% who said the same thing in July 2023. So Trump's unfavorability issues came from those groups in 2023.

Democrats had an overwhelmingly negative view of the former president with 91% noting that they had an unfavorable view of Trump. The findings from March 2024 were remarkably similar to what Pew discovered in July 2023 and showed voters have pretty much made up their minds about the former president.

Well over half of Americans had an unfavorable view of the former president in July 2023 with 63% of respondents saying so whereas only 35% of people polled noted they viewed Trump favorably. Trump’s rating sat at 60% in 2022, so he has seen a slight to moderate increase over the last few years. 

The former president lost the most ground in July 2023 among the key voting blocs he needed to win back the presidency from Joe Biden in 2024. Those blocs were Republicans, and Republican-leaning independents—people who at the time may have seen Trump as a liability.

Only 66% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents had a favorable view of the former president in Pew's July 2023, a percentage that may seem high at first but was much lower when compared to Trump’s favorability in 2022. 

Trump’s favorability among Republicans had tumbled by 9 percentage points between 2022 and 2023 according to the Pew Research Center, which found the former president enjoyed 75% favorability among Republicans in 2022 while only 24% viewed him unfavorably. 

The July 2023 findings were a worrying development for the former president but they didn't really reflect the GOP primary nomination numbers at the time, which had Trump far ahead of his closest competitors according to aggregated polling data from RealClearPolitics. 

The former president was leading the Republican presidential nomination race with a commanding 52.3% of the vote at the time with runner-up Ron DeSantis at 18% while Mike Pence and Vivek Ramaswamy were sitting at an uncomfortable 5.5%. Nikki Haley wasn't even a real contender at that point in time. 

All other contenders in the Republican presidential nomination race were below 3% and it was likely from the data presented by RealClearPolitics in July 2023 that Trump would capture the nomination, something that the former president did on March 12th, 2024 according to the Associated Press. 

The numbers in July 2023 did make sense at the time. A majority of Republicans clearly still saw Trump favorably. But all the drama surrounding the former president and his announced and pending criminal indictments may have been why he saw burgeoning unpopularity with some Republicans.

The former president was being investigated on multiple fronts in July 2023 according to BBC News, the most serious of which at the time were 37 criminal charges Trump faced in connection with classified documents he allegedly took to Florida. That number eventually reached 91 criminal charges. 

Interestingly, Trump’s unfavorability in July 2023 didn't seem to bleed over into his head-to-head match-ups against Joe Biden in a hypothetical general election at the time. RealClearPolitics analysis of the situation on July 25th showed Biden winning by a narrow 43.9% to 43.8% margin. 

Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents continued to view Trump unfavorably in 2023 according to Pew, which found roughly nine-in-ten respondents in either group had an unfavorable view of the former president, equating to 91% of those polled. That number remained the same 91% into 2024.