New Abolish ICE polling and the end of the Trump “realignment”
Your weekly political data roundup for January 25, 2026.
Dear readers,
This is my weekly roundup of new political data published over the last seven days.
This week brought a new New York Times/Siena University poll with numbers that confirm what Strength In Numbers has been reporting since early 2025: Trump’s 2024 coalition has come undone. Young voters, non-white voters, and low-turnout voters who swung to Trump from 2020 to 2024 have swung back against him in force. In many cases, these groups are even more anti-Trump now than they were ahead of the 2020 election.
On deck this week: Tuesday’s Deep Dive will examine results of two political knowledge questions from this month’s poll, and Friday’s Chart of the Week will react to the news of the week (or, some other projects depending, look at how Americans in competitive Senate and congressional seats feel about Trump’s deportations).
I will also be keeping an eye out for new polling on ICE/immigration enforcement/deportations after federal agents shot and killed a second person, Alex Pretti, in Minnesota on Saturday, Jan. 24. One early poll from YouGov, fielded on Saturday, shows abolishing ICE at +5 support among all adults, and +12 among political independents:
Plus, strong disapproval of ICE is at 57%, and approval is just 24% among political independents:
Considering many Americans had not even heard of ICE killing Alex Pretti by Saturday afternoon (when this poll was fielded), I think these numbers are going to get even worse for the administration as time goes on. Support for abolishing ICE has been increasing over the last year and recently hit an all-time high.
For now, let’s dig into what the NYT/Siena poll reveals about the unraveling of Trump’s coalition.
I. The 2024 Trump coalition has unraveled
A new NYT/Siena poll published Jan. 22 sucked up a lot of oxygen in the latter half of this week, so it seems the obvious choice for this week’s lead data story.
When Trump took office for his second term a year ago, he was — at least by his usual standards — relatively popular. His approval rating was above 50 percent, and he had made “enormous breakthroughs among groups that have traditionally voted Democratic, like young, non-white and lower-turnout voters,” as the Times‘ Nate Cohn put it. Some (very eager) people even called it a political realignment.
But one year later, the vibe has shifted back. The poll finds just 40% of registered voters approve of Trump’s performance, while 56% disapprove. More importantly, as Cohn writes, “The major demographic shifts of the last election have snapped back.” The chart below shows Trump’s approval rating by demographic group in October 2020, October 2024, and September 2025/January 2026.
What really stands out here is that for most groups, Trump’s approval today is significantly below his approval ahead of the 2020 election (which the president lost by 4.5 points in the national vote). Young voters, in particular, have turned sharply against the president — 69% now disapprove. For comparison, Biden’s vote share in 2020 among young voters was just 60%.
This is what SIN has been tracking
For regular readers of Strength In Numbers, this new NYT poll shouldn’t be a surprise. The survey is just the latest data point in a trend I’ve been covering for the last year:
In February 2025, I documented the 11-point gap between Trump’s vote share (49.8%) and support for his policies (38%). I pointed out that while voters in 2024 cast a ballot for Trump, that was not a vote for Trumpism.
In April 2025, I wrote that Trump was losing his gains with young people. “Young people did not move towards Trump in 2024 because they’re more MAGA,” I wrote then, “they moved towards Trump because they’re sensitive to economics and don’t trust ‘the system.’ And that’s ultimately why Trump will lose them, too.”
I also wrote last April that Trump’s immigration agenda, in particular, was far more extreme than voters wanted. I predicted that this would end up marginalizing swing voters and push his numbers down.
In June, I showed that many of Trump’s policies were unpopular with about 15-20% of his 2024 voters, which would put him and his party in an even worse position over time.
In November, I wrote that the “Trump realignment is already over.”
And on Friday, I showed that Trump’s first year was the worst for any president since Nixon’s second term, with a 21-point collapse in net approval.
What we’re seeing in polls is a turbocharged thermostatic response to Trump’s presidency and and policy agenda. It is normal in politics to see voters move against the incumbent party when the government moves policy too far to the right or to the left. But Trump’s second term constitutes not merely a normal change in the average policy output of the government. Especially on immigration, policy has moved far to the right, and far beyond what the public supports. Hence the huge swings.
Backlash against what?
Cohn reasons that the biggest source of Trump's loss of support is the president’s handing of the economy. But it is not the only source. According to Cohn, among voters who have soured on Trump since voting for him in 2024, 44% cite economic issues as the biggest problem facing the country today. But, as Cohn reports, 50% cited something other than the economy, including Trump himself, threats to democracy, and deportations/ICE.
And consider that “what is the most important problem facing the country?” is not the same question as “why do you disapprove of Trump now?” And also, we should account for the fact that half of the Times data being used for those calculations is coming from a September sample. The issue landscape has changed a lot since September: As my polling has shown, more Americans now pick immigration/deportations as their most important problem than pick jobs and the economy. This is a big change in my data since September, so maybe the Times crosstab is understating the role immigration is playing in Trump’s lower numbers now.
So, I don’t buy the argument from some Democratic strategists that Democrats subtract from their future potential gains by fighting Trump on immigration and deportations instead of going all-in on the economy. Heck, the Times poll shows the president at -17 on immigration, tied with the economy.
2024 was de-alignment, not realignment
Smart people have called the 2024 election a “de-alignment” rather than a realignment. It is important to point out that Trump’s victory was not a result of ideological conversions to MAGA. The voters he gained were largely frustrated, economically anxious, anti-system voters who punished the party in power. Now that Trump is the one in power — and prices haven’t come down — they’re punishing him.
The U-Turn in support for Trump was easily predictable to those of us paying attention to (a) the data on why he won in 2024 (inflation, low Democratic turnout) and (b) the polls on the president’s agenda coming out early in his term.
And the U-Turn a good reminder to not interpret elections as mono-causal events, votes strictly for/against a candidate’s entire agenda, or as sources of durable mandates for whatever comes next. Most voters are responding only to a narrow bundle of conditions and stimuli on newsy issues in the moment they cast their vote.
Then, voters can quickly update their attitudes when those conditions or other stimuli change.
II. What Strength In Numbers published last week
Here’s what you might have missed this week:
On Wednesday, I shared our new January SIN/Verasight national poll, which shows Trump losing ground on immigration and the Democrats leading the generic ballot by 8 points:
And, also on Thursday, I did a Substack Live conversation with my friend David Nir of The Downballot, discussing that interactive map and Trump’s terrible polls, one year into his second term:
On Thursday, I published an interactive map of Trump’s approval rating at the local neighborhood level:
A very detailed map of Trump's job approval
This is an extra Thursday post with a quick note about yesterday’s poll and a link to a new interactive tool I’ve been building for the past few months.
And Friday’s Chart of the Week put Trump’s first year in historical context — only Nixon (Watergate!) had a worse second-term year one:
If you’re a frequent reader of Strength In Numbers, I’m confident you will get a lot of value out of a paid subscription. You’ll get access to all of my analysis, including weekly Tuesday Deep Dives, and you’ll be supporting independent data journalism.
III. Even more numbers!
Here’s what I’ve been reading this week:
The New York Times shows the voters who have taken a U-turn on Trump — the lead source for this roundup’s analysis.
The AP reports that AAPI voters are particularly worried about inflation, with about half wanting the government to prioritize cost of living — significantly higher than the one-third of U.S. adults overall who say the same.
Yahoo News finds that more Americans than ever think Trump is “changing America for the worse” — 49% now, up from 43% in March.
CNN reports that Democrats are deeply motivated for the midterms despite having dismal views of party leaders. Among highly motivated voters, the Democratic generic ballot lead expands from 5 points to a massive 16 points.
The New York Times’ Charlie Savage and Lazaro Gamio catalog how Trump is pushing to expand presidential power — a systematic breakdown of his attempts to centralize authority over the executive branch, claim powers from Congress, and weaponize government against adversaries.
Data for Progress finds that voters want new federal investment in housing and infrastructure: 71% want the government to take a more active role in shaping the economy, and 62% say we’re not investing enough in housing.
YouGov asks what Americans think are major problems among members of both parties. The most bipartisan concern? Tolerance of political violence — 44% see it as a major problem among Republicans, 40% among Democrats.
IV. Polling update
The Strength In Numbers polling averages have moved to a new webpage at fiftyplusone.news. You can find the latest numbers there, updated daily.
Trump’s net job approval is -17.2 today, and his approval hit a new low of 39.4% among all adults.
The generic ballot is Democrats +4.3.
Trump’s issue approval average for immigration has also been sinking recently, and hit a new low of -8.5 this week:
And that’s it for this week! Thanks for reading. Strength In Numbers will be back in your inbox on Tuesday!
Got more for next week? Email your links or add a comment below!
Elliott
Related Articles
Trump’s losing his gains with young people
Trump’s year one is the worst since Nixon
Pundits - and Democrats - have been misreading Trump's approval on "immigration" because they conflate border security (slight approval) with interior deportations (large and growing disapproval).
Our national discourse would be much more accurate if those two aspects of "immigration" were separated - as you do consistently.
I was interested in Elliott’s slight critique of the way NYT tends to adhere to the line that voters are almost entirely focused on the economy to the exclusion of other issues, even when their own data seems open to other conclusions. I’ve wondered about that before now.