A majority of Americans think that Trump uses the presidential pardon power too frequently and most Americans are in favor of placing constitutional limits on the president's ability to pardon. Far more disapprove than approve of specific recent pardons and commutations given out by Trump.
What you need to know about Americans' views on presidential pardons, as of the December 5 - 8, 2025 Economist / YouGov Poll:
- 58% of Americans think that Trump gives out too many pardons; 17% think he gives out about the right number and only 4% say he gives out too few
- The vast majority of Democrats (88%) say Trump uses the pardon power too often
- Republicans are more divided: 36% say he gives out the right number of pardons while 23% say he gives out too many and 7% say he gives out too few
- What do Americans think about Trump's recent uses of the pardon power? Far more disapprove than approve
- 66% disapprove and 15% approve of the pardon of Texas Democratic Representative Henry Cuellar and his wife, who had been charged with accepting $600,000 in bribes
- 66% disapprove and 13% approve of the pardon of Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who in 2024 was convicted of drug trafficking and sentenced to 45 years in prison
- 67% disapprove and 11% approve of the commutation of the sentence of David Gentile, who had been convicted of a $1.6 billion financial fraud and had served two weeks of a seven-year prison sentence
- A majority (56%) of Americans believe that the Constitution should be amended to limit the president’s ability to grant pardons; 25% think the president's pardon power should not be limited
- Democrats support limiting the presidential pardon power by 76% to 9%
- Republicans are somewhat more likely to oppose than support putting limitations on the president's pardon power (45% vs. 34%)
- Opinion by party about pardons has varied depending on who is in office
- At the end of Trump's first term, more Republicans than Democrats approved of presidential pardon power
- Last December, in the final months of Joe Biden's presidency, Democrats and Republicans were about equally likely to approve of pardon power
Learn more about this poll here.
Image: Getty (Getty Images / Stringer)
