American voters increasingly believe President Donald Trump is doing more to corrupt the federal government than clean it up, according to an influential group of Democratic pollsters, which could present a major opportunity for the opposition party ahead of November’s midterm elections.
A new survey from the Navigator Research Project, whose findings are widely shared in Democratic circles, found 60% of voters believe Trump — whose political career famously began with promises to drain the swamp and criticisms of money in politics — is bringing more corruption to Washington, compared with just 40% who think he’s fixing the problem.
That’s a dramatic shift from the start of Trump’s presidency, when the portion of voters who thought Trump was causing corruption in Navigator’s polling was just 2 percentage points greater than the chunk who believed he was fixing it.
“This is a big, big change,” said Tina Tang, the group’s polling director. “People are feeling Trump is bringing more corruption, and that feeling is widespread across demographics and across partisanship.”
Julia Demaree Nikhinson/Associated Press
On one level, the finding is not especially surprising: Trump and his allies have engaged in an unprecedented amount of self-dealing during his second term, from his family’s cryptocurrency company to his acceptance of a jet from the Qatari royal family to Truth Social selling early access to his posts.
But for most of his time on the national political scene, Democrats have struggled to break through the image Trump cultivated during his initial run for office as a wealthy businessman uninterested in self-enrichment and uniquely able to call out government corruption.
The shift is happening at a crucial time: The same surveys found a third of voters, and nearly 40% of independents, said combating corruption in government was among their top five issues, trailing core economic issues such as healthcare and inflation, but ahead of immigration, housing and crime, among others.
The perception of government corruption is widespread: 33% of all voters say nearly all or most elected officials are corrupt, a number that spikes to 40% among independents. (Other polling agrees: A Gallup survey last week found 89% of Americans believe corruption in government is widespread, an all-time high.)
Republicans are seen as more corrupt than Democrats, especially when Trump is explicitly mentioned: 51% say Trump and Republicans are more corrupt, compared with 32% who say Democrats are more corrupt. Remove Trump from the question wording and the gap shrinks: 46% say the GOP is more corrupt; 34% say Democrats are.
However, neither party is seen as significantly better than the other when it comes to taking on corruption: 35% of voters trust Democrats to better handle taking on government corruption, while 33% trust the GOP.
Many top Democratic candidates this cycle have made corruption a major theme of their campaigns, including Sen. Jon Ossoff (Ga.) and state Rep. James Talarico, the party’s candidate for Senate in Texas. But some progressives continue to worry the party is pulling its punches on the issue, in part out of fear of alienating corporate interests that might be implicated in Trump’s schemes.
Republicans, however, have attempted to fight back on the issue, airing ads noting many of the party’s House members backed a bill to ban congressional stock-trading.