Voters’ long-held view that President Donald Trump is a solid steward of the nation’s economy may be slipping in Pennsylvania, according to the results of the latest Franklin & Marshall College Poll.
Just 36% of registered voters contacted for the survey said they had a favorable view of Trump’s record on job creation — a sharp drop from July 2020, when 45% of respondents said the same.
Meanwhile, 45% said Trump was either “below average” or “failing” at generating job growth. Fifteen percent said he was average on this issue, and 4% said they did not know.
In an October 2024 poll, just before Trump won the presidential election, 48% of voters said they believed he would be better on the economy than Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.
F&M’s latest poll surveyed 929 registered Pennsylvania voters, including 399 Democrats, 390 Republicans and 140 independents, between Sept. 24 and Oct. 5.
Asked about how Trump has handled rising inflation, a majority of respondents (52%) rated Trump as below average, while 33% viewed his work favorably. One percent were unsure, and 17% said they did not know.
Berwood Yost, director of the Floyd Institute’s Center for Opinion Research at F&M, said voter sentiment surrounding Trump’s handling of the economy could be a “liability” for him and the GOP in next year’s midterm elections.
The poll also found that Trump’s handling of immigration is a divisive issue among Pennsylvania voters. Just under half (47%) view his immigration policies favorably, while 44% viewed them unfavorably. Eight percent said he was performing average on immigration.
Immigration is just one area where Trump’s second-term actions have split Pennsylvanians, the poll found, with much of that criticism falling along partisan lines. For example, three-quarters of Republicans rate Trump as “excellent” or “good” in his role as president, while just one-third of independents and one-in-ten Democrats said the same.
And on Trump’s most notable domestic policy — the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” — only one-quarter of independent voters and one-in-ten Democrats favor the tax cut and spending legislation, while roughly three-quarters of Republicans favor it.
Overall, 58% of respondents said Trump is doing a “fair” or “poor job.” Those figures largely align with where he stood during the 2020 election and are similar to former President Barack Obama’s at this point in the Democrat’s second term.
Forty-one percent said Trump was doing either an “excellent” or “good job” as president.
The sample error for the survey is +/- 4.0 percentage points.
State politics
The F&M survey showed that Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro continues to boast a high approval rating — 51% of respondents said he is “excellent” or “good” at his job, while 40% said he is “fair” or “poor.”
Shapiro’s favorability comes despite 46% of those surveyed saying they believe Pennsylvania is “on the wrong track” — significantly more than the 37% who said it is “headed in the right direction. For context, a majority of polled voters haven’t told F&M that the state was heading in the right direction since January 2020.
The F&M’s poll shows slightly less enthusiasm for Shapiro than was found in a Quinnipiac University poll released last week, which reported 60% of respondents voicing approval of Shapiro’s job performance and just 28% saying they disapprove.
The disparity between the polls’ findings is likely due to a difference in how they pose their question, according to Yost. Both numbers, he said, are a positive sign for Shapiro.
Quinnipiac also found that Shapiro leads his GOP-endorsed gubernatorial opponent, state Treasurer Stacy Garrity, 55% to 39%, while 4% of voters are undecided. But it should be noted that nearly three-quarters (73%) said they did not know enough about Garrity to form an opinion about her job performance.
F&M did not pose any questions about Garrity or her likely 2026 match-up against Shapiro.
Pennsylvania is in its fourth month without a state budget, and F&M pollsters found the impasse in Harrisburg is driving voters’ discontent with government.
Concerns about government and politics were the top problem cited by respondents, with 23% mentioning it. That narrowly surpassed the bread-and-butter economic issues that usually rank highest in the survey: 22% of respondents ranked the economy, including unemployment, housing costs and higher gas and utility prices, as the top problem facing the state in the new survey.
“They’re often talking about the polarization and the inability of politicians to get things done … to solve the problems that people think are important,” Yost said. “But when you have a budget impasse at the state level and compile that with the federal government’s problems at the moment, it just reinforces to more people that our politics doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to.”
Supreme Court retention
Three state Supreme Court justices face a “yes” or “no” retention question on the ballot next month, giving voters a chance to decide whether they should continue to serve on Pennsylvania’s highest court.
The retention race has drawn an unusual amount of attention for what has typically been a sleepy matter. Republicans have launched an aggressive and expensive campaign to oust the trio, who were elected in 2015 as Democrats and have ruled on major cases involving the redrawing of the state’s congressional map, COVID-19 lockdowns and mail-in ballot system.
Democrats, including Shapiro, meanwhile, are spending big on a counter-campaign to retain the justices.
Yet, about one-third of likely voters told F&M they are undecided on how they’ll cast their ballots. The remaining two-thirds for each justice are generally split, though more respondents said they plan to vote “yes” than “no” to retain the judges.
That question was posed to 422 likely voters who said they are either “certain” or “very interested” in the retention campaign. The results have a sample error of +/- 5.9 percentage points.