UW-Madison Survey Assesses Changing Public Attitudes Since Trump’s Election

(MADISON, Wis.) Nearly one and a half years into the second Trump presidency, a new University of Wisconsin-Madison survey report finds surprising insights on how Americans’ views have changed since the 2024 election.

The report investigates public views toward recent policies championed by President Donald Trump, public mood and well-being assessments, trust in social and political institutions, views about the political system, views on voting restrictions tied to historic inequities, and public perceptions of “artificial intelligence” and data center construction.

The public is broadly opposed to many of the president’s policies, sometimes by large majorities, and sometimes with pluralities of Republicans opposed too. That opposition includes ICE immigration raids, government pressure on media companies & universities, school vaccine requirements, banning abortion pills in the mail, and potential war on Greenland.

The public’s mood is very negative. Compared to 2024, Americans in 2026 were 17 percentage points more likely to say, “things are going to get worse in this country.” The public overwhelming believes the national economy is worse now than it was one year ago with 66% saying worse, and just 15% saying better. Trust in many political institutions has declined even further.

SJMC Professor and CCCR Faculty Director Michael Wagner

A large minority of Americans believe our lives are largely controlled by plots hatched in secret places and that our real leaders aren’t known to us. Republicans became less conspiratorial when they gained national power and Democrats became more conspiratorial, though Democrats were still less conspiratorial than Republicans overall.

The 2024-26 Wisconsin Communication & Election Study is a multi-wave survey panel administered online by YouGov. Wave 1 was fielded before the presidential election from October 17 to November 4, 2024. Wave 2 fielded in April and May of 2025 with reinterviews of Wave 1 participants plus a supplemental fresh cross-section. Wave 3 fielded March 23 to April 14, 2026, with prior participants plus a supplemental fresh cross-section. We also fielded Midwestern regional surveys with many of the same questions. A team of UW-Madison faculty, grad students, and staff affiliated with the Center for Communication and Civic Renewal (CCCR) developed dozens of questions, led by CCCR’s Faculty Director Dr. Michael Wagner.

Dr. Michael Wagner, who is also the William T. Evjue Distinguished Chair for the Wisconsin Idea in the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication, noted how the results highlight the dark national mood, which is likely to shape voting patterns in the fall 2026 midterm elections.

“Our respondents told us that they are even more negative about the Trump administration than most folks are in typical midterms, which are already challenging for the party of the president. As our previous work has shown, it will be important to monitor unsubstantiated claims about election integrity going forward this election season,” Wagner said.

“Most Americans do not support the Trump administration’s major policy changes, and we even see a few of the president’s positions becoming unpopular in his own party,” said Dr. Dhavan Shah, McLeod Professor of Communication Research and Research Director for the Center for Communication and Civic Renewal at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

SJMC Professor and CCCR Research Director Dhavan Shah

The survey also provides insights on views on political violence. The public strongly disapproves of political violence, and, if anything, that disapproval has grown slightly since Fall 2024. Only 5% of respondents agreed that violence against political enemies is permissible, with levels indistinguishable across partisans and Independents.

Finally, we asked about artificial intelligence and data centers. The public is neutral about AI across a range of evaluations, including accuracy, effectiveness, usefulness, safety, and ethics. Democrats are slightly more negative toward AI than Republicans. The public’s views were strongly negative on constructing data centers. Democrats were substantially more negative than Republicans and Independents, but all three groups disliked data centers.

Although non-probability samples do not have traditional margins of error, percentages from the full sample have a virtual margin of error of +/- 2 percentage points for estimates near 50%, with smaller margins for estimates as they move toward 0% or 100%. Estimates for Democrats in the two states have margins of error of +/- 3 percentage points, and estimates for Republicans are +/- 3 percentage points.

The research team also fielded a Midwest-focused survey with many of the same questions for scholarly work.

The 2024-26 Wisconsin Communication & Election Study was supported by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which advances research on the intersections of media and democracy.

About the Center for Communication & Civic Renewal

The Center for Communication & Civic Renewal (CCCR) is an interdisciplinary research team housed in the School of Journalism & Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. CCCR’s research aims to understand Wisconsin public opinion and the state’s broad political communication ecology, drawing upon frameworks and methods foundations in communication, political science, sociology, psychology, and computer science. Dr. Michael Wagner leads the Center as Faculty Director, Dr. Dhavan Shah is the Center’s Research Director, and Dr. Nathan Kalmoe serves as Executive Administrative Director for the Center.

The Center’s public opinion polling is one of three analytical components in its broader efforts studying political communication in Wisconsin, the Midwest, and beyond. Over the years, we have also conducted in-depth interviews with hundreds of citizens throughout the state to understand how they’re talking and thinking about politics. And we have conducted large-scale computational analyses of social media and news media content throughout the Wisconsin, the United Stares, and the world.

CCCR’s past research is synthesized in the book, Battleground: Asymmetric Communication Ecologies and the Erosion of Civil Society in Wisconsin, published by Cambridge University Press in 2022, along with several peer-reviewed articles published in academic journals, and public-facing essays published in national news outlets including the Washington Post, Vox, and TechStream as well as local outlets like the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the Capital Times, and the Wisconsin State Journal

Our January 2025 report, “The American Voter in 2024,” assessed a large national pre-election public opinion survey to investigate partisan agreement and division in attitudes, behaviors, and media consumption patterns that determined pivotal election outcomes. We examined party loyalty, identity group attitudes and prejudices, economic perceptions and experiences, foreign policy attitudes, and partisan news diets.

Our June 2025 report, “100 Days Under Trump,” analyzed a large national public opinion survey from April & May 2025 to investigate public views of Trump’s first 100 days, along with how media consumption patterns shape views among Republicans. We found little public support for Trump’s seismic policy changes overall, negative national economic and personal finance evaluations, low levels of institutional trust, and substantial party gaps in all of those views.