Two-thirds of those surveyed said they do not like the job Trump is doing, with most voters across the three states — 55 percent — saying they strongly disapprove of his performance.
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Even in New Hampshire, where Trump has been more competitive across three elections, his ratings were far underwater: Just 35 percent said they approve of what he’s done, compared to 64 percent who said they disapprove. Overall, 68 percent said the country is on the “wrong track,” a portion that held steady when looking at results in the three individual states.
The majority of those polled said they also have dim views of national Democratic leaders.
And just one in four voters said the economy is in good or excellent shape. That’s a notable drop from the fall. Roughly 41 percent of voters in Massachusetts held that view in October, when Joe Biden was still in office and Trump and then-Vice President Kamala Harris were on the campaign trail for the White House.
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The opinions about the economy aren’t driven solely along ideological lines. Just 4 percent of Republicans in those three states view the economy as “excellent,” the poll found.
“[Trump] said from day one that he’s going to fix all of these problems: drive down inflation and bring the stock market to record highs. And he’s done the exact opposite,” said Michael Hilliard, a 58-year-old Taunton resident and field technician for a telecommunications company. A registered Democrat, Hilliard said he’s had a few friends laid off from work in recent months. It’s a sign, he said, that companies and the economy are beginning to pull back.
“He’s destroying the country from the inside out,” Hilliard said of Trump. “The next president is going to have to put everything back together again.”
Despite that darkening economic outlook, voters across the three states seemed relatively sanguine about their own financial situations. Nearly 58 percent said they believe their job is secure, and even more said they could easily find a job if they needed to. A plurality of those surveyed — about 44 percent — said they believe their “household financial situation” will remain the same over the next year.
Voters expressed deeply negative views on a range of Trump’s specific policies. Two-thirds said they oppose the various tariffs Trump has pursued. Roughly the same share said they also oppose rolling back diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in the federal government, or the government spending cuts wrought by the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
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By far, the most unpopular of Trump’s decisions was his move to cancel hundreds of millions of dollars in medical and research funding to universities and hospitals, a battle felt acutely at Harvard University and other prestigious schools, as well as throughout Massachusetts’ critical life sciences industry. More than 75 percent of those surveyed said they opposed such cuts.
A vast majority — some 70 percent — said they also disapprove of how Immigration and Customs Enforcement has handled arrests and deportations under the Trump administration. Black voters (89 percent) and Hispanic voters (72 percent) viewed the tactics even more negatively.
“It started off with people who were strictly criminal. Now they’ve taken it too far and are deporting everyone,” said Diana Mendoza, a 32-year-old Roxbury resident and administrative assistant for an elderly day-care program.
A single mother of two, she said she voted for Trump last November in part because of his “economy talk.” She said she’s reserving judgment so far on his economic policies, but said she soured on his approach to immigration “when they started pulling people apart and children are literally in the street screaming for their parents.”
“Or the kid who recently got arrested on his way to a volleyball [practice],” she said, referring to Marcelo Gomes da Silva, the Milford teen who has no criminal record and was detained by ICE agents searching for his father. “Like, seriously?”
A strong majority of those polled also similarly denounced the Trump administration’s approach in the case of Rümeysa Öztürk, the Tufts PhD student whom a federal judge ordered be released weeks after she was detained by ICE. Nearly 70 percent said they disapproved of the administration’s handling of her case.
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It’s not only Trump with whom voters are unhappy. When asked to rate the performance of national Democratic leaders in addressing key issues, 56 percent of voters said it was “poor,” while not even 10 percent rated it “excellent” or “good.”
That number is striking because while Trump’s approval ratings are likely to be lower around New England than in other parts of the country — and they are, according to polling — that opposition hasn’t been a natural boon for Democrats, said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center.
“The assumption is … if people are anti-Trump, they’re going to be more bullish on Democratic leaders. And that’s not really the case at all,” he said. “There is an abundance of pessimism.”
Voters differed, however, on exactly how Democrats should respond. About half of those surveyed said they wanted their senators or representatives in Congress — all of whom are Democrats in New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts — to decide on a case-by-case basis whether to support or oppose Trump.
Another 29 percent said they should “resist Trump and his administration however possible.”
“We’re in the midst of a fascist takeover, and if that isn’t apparent, then one of us is in denial,” said Meg Newman, a 69-year-old registered Democrat and retired physician in Lebanon, N.H. She said she doesn’t view Democrats as the problem, but said she wishes they “would push back even more.”
“We need to be explicit about what is happening, and call it what it is,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean you don’t show up for votes and try to rally your colleagues, particularly your Republican colleagues, to do the right thing.”
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Some who voted for Trump said they have mixed feelings about the results so far. Joan Kelly, a 57-year-old nurse practitioner and registered independent voter from Bedford, said she’s “thrilled” with Trump’s more aggressive approach to immigration and border crossings. She said she believes the economy is in good shape, despite people being cautious about spending money.
But she said there’s also growing instability in international relations, to the point it “feels like we’re on the brink of World War III.”
“I have a 19-year-old and a 16-year-old. I worry about their longevity and their future. And as a parent, I’m sitting here saying, ‘I have guilt bringing them into the world,’” Kelly said. “I don’t know if the world is going to be here in the long term.”
The Suffolk/Globe poll was conducted over five days, from June 1 to June 5, and its margin of error was plus or minus 3.1 percentage points. Live callers reached respondents via mobile and landline phones.
Matt Stout can be reached at matt.stout@globe.com. Follow him @mattpstout.