Harvard Poll: Majority Of American Voters More Satisfied With Trump Than Biden In First Month Of Second Term

A majority of voters are more satisfied with President Donald Trump than they were with former President Joe Biden as they reflect on the first month of the second Trump administration, according to a recent poll.

Trump has an approval rating of 52% as 58% of voters are more satisfied with the current president compared to the last, according to a February Harvard CAPS / Harris poll. More voters, 72%, are supportive of having a government agency focused on efficiency initiatives, the poll shows.

“People are taking a generally positive wait-and-see attitude for Trump but have really reassessed their attitudes toward Biden, Harris, and the Democrats, taking a much harsher, more negative attitude,” Mark Penn, the co-director of the Harvard CAPS / Harris poll, wrote in a press release published Monday.

“Trump has a real opportunity here – we’re seeing a healthy, trudging approval edging toward real approval based on how the next couple of months turn out,” Penn continued.

All of Trump’s policies, including deporting illegal immigrants that have committed crimes, “undertaking a full-scale effort to find and eliminate fraud and waste in government expenditures” and eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives from the federal government, received a majority of support from Americans, according to the poll. (RELATED: Elon Musk Says DOGE ‘Must Be Over Target’ If Dems Are Losing Their Minds Over Trump Admin Cuts)

The only policy polled that did not receive a majority of support (39%) was the president’s renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.

As Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency audits every federal government department for unnecessary spending, 77% of voters say “a full examination of all government expenditures is necessary” and 70% believe that government expenditures are filled with “waste, fraud and inefficiency,” the poll shows. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: DOGE Asks NIH Employees: So What Do You Do Around Here?)

Voters’ optimism on the direction of the country is continuing to rise, the poll shows, as 42% of voters say the country is on the right track, which is a 14-point increase from January 2025.

The survey was conducted among 2,443 registered voters within the United States between Feb. 19-20. The respondents were recruited through an opt-in, web-panel recruitment sampling and the margin of error is 2 points. 

As Trump and his administration receive support from American voters, Democrats are facing their lowest approval rating since March 2018, the poll shows. Thirty-three percent of voters approve of the Democratic Party, compared to 49% of voters approving of the Republican Party, according to the poll.

Leading up to the 2024 election, Democrats and corporate media figures repeatedly labeled Trump a “threat” to democracy. And now, as Tesla CEO and Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE) Chairman Elon Musk takes his team to each department, they are calling him an unelected bureaucrat.

A poster with a map captionned “Gulf of America” is seen as US President Donald Trump speaks by the signed commission to make Howard Lutnick US Secretary of Commerce sitting on the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on February 21, 2025. (Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)

Decisions by Musk and DOGE have caused an uprising from the Democratic Party, which began protesting in Washington, D.C., after Musk announced that he and the president would upend the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and place it under the control of Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller responded to the criticism during a Thursday press briefing, explaining to the press corps that a president is elected and then uses his power to hire a staff to implement his agenda.

“A president is elected by the whole American people, he is the only official in the entire government that is elected by the entire nation, right?” Miller said.

“Judges are appointed, members of Congress are elected at the district and state level, just one man in the Constitution, Article II, has a clause, known as the vesting clause, and it says that the executive power shall be vested in a president. Singular. The whole will of democracy is imbued into the elected president,” he continued. “That president then appoints staff to then impose that democratic will on to the government.”