Trump's popularity in a slump in California amid abuse-of-power concerns

Michael Wilner, Los Angeles Times on May 6, 2025

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WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump remains deeply unpopular in California after his first 100 days in office, with conservatives and liberals alike expressing concern that U.S. courts can effectively serve as a check on his power, according to a new UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll co-sponsored by The Times.

Overall, the poll, conducted during the last week of April, found that 68% of registered voters in California disapprove of the president's job performance and believe the country is on the wrong track.

Republicans in California, who make up roughly a quarter of registered voters, continue to support the president's policies. But 65% of registered voters across the state believe that Trump's actions have "gone beyond his constitutional authority as president," including 24% of Republicans and 63% of independents, the poll found.

Looking forward, voters said they lack confidence that the U.S. judicial system can serve as a check against Trump "should he overstep his constitutional authorities," with only 13% of total registered voters expressing strong confidence in the powers of the courts.

Only 51% of voters who identified as strong conservatives, and 53% of registered Republicans, said they have any confidence in the judiciary's ability to check an overstepping president. And among the Republicans, just 27% said they are very confident.

Since Trump took office, officials in his administration have launched a series of attacks on district court judges who have ruled against them, and have slow-walked, if not explicitly defied, several court rulings, including one order from the U.S. Supreme Court regarding the mistaken deportation of a Maryland man to a prison in El Salvador.

The poll found that up to this point, 27% of voters believe Trump has operated within his constitutional authorities, while 65% do not.

"That's an interesting set of numbers, because you would think that the public would be standing behind the judicial system," said Mark DiCamillo, director of the Berkeley IGS Poll. "Trump is really pushing the limits and testing the system."

Trump support is consistently low

Among all registered voters, 61% said they believe that Trump's second term will be worse than his first. Only 33% said the changes Trump is making to the federal government will have a positive impact on California.

"The numbers, historically, kind of speak for themselves — they're extremely low, greater than 2 to 1, disapproving of Trump in those first hundred days," DiCamillo said.

Those numbers are consistent across demographics, with 68% of white voters, 64% of Latino voters, 79% of Black voters and 71% of Asian American and Pacific Islander voters in the state disapproving of the president's job performance.

Trump faced similarly low approval numbers among California voters throughout his first term, reaching a nadir during the summer of 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when 71% of the state's registered voters disapproved of his job performance. At the time, only 29% approved of the president's record.

Few are missing Biden

Despite historic disapproval of Trump throughout the state, Californians are still looking back on President Joe Biden's term with mixed emotions, the poll found.

Asked to reflect on Biden's legacy, 31% of registered voters said that he would be remembered as an average president. Only 23% said his performance was above average, or among the best of any president, while 43% said it was below average, if not one of the worst.

It is a stark report card from one of the most heavily Democratic states in the nation, where 63.5% of voters cast ballots for Biden in 2020. In the 2024 election, after Biden dropped out of the race, 58.5% in the state cast votes for his vice president and a native Californian, Kamala Harris.

"The Biden numbers are more negative than positive," DiCamillo said. "Even when you look at the Democrats, they're not overwhelmingly of the view that he's done an above-average job."

"It's a very mediocre set of numbers," he added. "It's not a ringing endorsement as they look back on the Biden years."