As often happens early in a presidential term, much of the focus has been on the new Trump administration, which started with net positive reviews — but how do Americans think the parties in Congress should be reacting?
The nation’s rank-and-file Democrats are increasingly looking for more opposition to President Trump from their congressional delegation. Ahead of the inauguration, a slight majority of Democrats thought their congressional representatives ought to seek common ground.
Today, a few weeks into the term, those sentiments are lower, and more Democrats want their party in Congress to oppose Mr. Trump as much as possible.
Liberal Democrats are the most likely to want opposition. In January, that view was more confined to the “very” liberal than it is now. Today, it includes most Democrats who identify as liberals, and moderate Democrats are more split over whether to find common ground.
Yet, they also express comparably a bit less confidence in their leaders’ ability to do so effectively than they did just before Mr. Trump took office. Today, just over half have at least some confidence — but not a lot — and half have not much confidence or none.
Meanwhile, Mr. Trump’s actions in these early weeks have been met with robust support from nation’s Republicans. But in principle, this doesn’t mean they wouldn’t want to see some pushback from congressional Republicans when the delegation disagrees with him. In fact, most do think things should work this way.
However, a sizable 4 in 10 rank-and-file Republicans would have their congressional delegation support whatever Mr. Trump wants — a view largely boosted by those Republicans who identify as part of the MAGA movement.
This CBS News/YouGov survey was conducted with a nationally representative sample of 2,175 U.S. adults interviewed between Feb. 5-7, 2025. The sample was weighted to be representative of adults nationwide according to gender, age, race, and education, based on the U.S. Census American Community Survey and Current Population Survey, as well as 2024 presidential vote. The margin of error is ±2.5 points.
