![Photo shows Donald Trump at a rally with supporters in the background.](https://dl6pgk4f88hky.cloudfront.net/2025/01/23/GettyImages-2046561409-1038x778.jpg)
I am not the first to speak of the Great American Vibe Shift. But in the week of Donald Trump’s inauguration it is important to remind ourselves: the arch-liberal pieties established in the 2010s have ebbed, and the dual bogeymen of the social conservative and the immigration hawk are no longer as toxic as they once were. Trump won in 2016 on a tight margin and an uneasy anti-establishment platform. After four years the Washington establishment rejected him, “somatically”, as Christopher Caldwell wrote in these pages. But in 2025, after winning the popular vote, Trump’s popularity is near an all-time high. His criminal conviction and litany of broken social mores have mattered little. In fact, they may have helped his case.
America is willing to give him another chance. Six in ten Americans are optimistic about the next four years with their new president. And of those who are optimistic, the overwhelming majority say it is not because of the end of Joe Biden (20 per cent), but rather the beginning of Trump (80 per cent). This speaks to, in part, the current impotence of the establishment centre. The US was looking to shake the status quo, not reaffirm the incumbency.
Trump starts his second presidency with more Americans thinking favourably of him than they did in his first day of office in 2017.
Incumbent governments struggled across the world in 2024 elections (Germany is heading for this fate, too, on 23 February). In the US the cost of living and a hostile housing market turned the electorate against Biden and Kamala Harris (no matter that Biden, by several metrics, improved the economy). The time was ripe for someone like Trump – a candidate more radical than the median American voter likes, but one who nonetheless appeals to the restlessness across the country – to declare war on Democrat policy mores. Centrist politics seems to have little currency for electorates in the 2020s.
In his inauguration address, Trump touched on culture-war stuff, some base-rallying stuff, some radical-rallying stuff (such as pardons for the 6 January rioters). So far, the pardon may be the most unpopular thing he has done in his busy first couple of days in office, irking the swing voters who went his way. Almost six in ten Americans disapproved of the move (hypothetical at that stage) at the beginning of the year.
But Trump’s “drill baby drill” line, his gestures towards energy independence, low taxes, and America first? These are memorable ideas, and I suspect a great deal of voters will have been happy to hear them. Below is a perhaps unsurprising graph of what the country wants from the newly minted administration.
There is goodwill for Trump, largely thanks to the expectation that he will be good for the economy. If he succeeds in that arena then voters should at least tolerate him for the next four years. And we shouldn’t forget that Trump’s fiery rhetoric on illegal immigrants is not unpopular: 62 per cent of American men according to YouGov for CBS back it. A slim majority of women don’t. But it has the approval of moderate Americans, as well as 37 per cent of black and 45 per cent of Hispanic Americans. The only serious opposition comes from liberals, with eight in ten disapproving.
Public opinion on the policy could sour once it emerges into a living, breathing measure. But so long as Americans feel a discernible improvement in their cost of living, do not expect overwhelming opposition.
The problem with Trump is his capacity for carnage. He may derail his own presidency. But his desperation to be liked could counterbalance the disruptive impulses. Fixing the economy – allaying the high cost of living felt by so many – will guarantee support from most voters for the foreseeable future. It will allow him to be all he has promised to be. How Democrats respond to that without major reform is anyone’s guess.
[See also: Team Trump’s real feelings about Starmer’s Labour]