Trump approval steady at 42%, support weakens for his immigration policy, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump's public approval rating held steady over the last month, but Americans are becoming less supportive of his approach to immigration as his administration cracks down, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that closed on Monday (June 16).

The six-day poll showed 42 per cent of US adults approved of the job the Republican is doing as president, unchanged from a prior Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted May 16-18. Trump's ratings have been largely stable since February and are only down modestly from the 47 per cent approval score he got immediately after returning to the White House in January.

His support on immigration, however, softened to 44 per cent from 47 per cent in mid-May. Trump has pledged to deport millions of people who are not authorised to be in the US He has ordered immigration raids at workplaces, prompting street demonstrations including in Los Angeles where some protesters set cars on fire. That led Trump to order military troops to the city to safeguard federal buildings and support immigration enforcement.

Many Americans support the military deployment and a majority of respondents in the latest poll — 63 per cent — said they were concerned by unauthorised immigration.

But Trump's ratings on immigration increasingly look like his ratings on other areas of policy, with the share of people who disapprove of his performance well above the share who approve. Some 49 per cent of respondents in the poll gave Trump a thumbs down on immigration, five percentage points higher than his approval on the matter. The share who disapprove also rose from 45 per cent a month earlier.

On the economy, 52 per cent disapproved compared to 39 per cent who liked what Trump was doing. Americans also gave him generally poor marks on foreign policy.

The survey, conducted online, gathered responses from 4,258 US adults and had a margin of error of about two percentage points.

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