Since mid-2017 favorable assessments of First Lady Melania Trump have increased nine points
First Lady Melania Trump continues to be the most popular member of President Donald Trump’s family – the only one with a net favorable rating in the latest Economist/YouGov Poll. She does far better than the other family members, including her husband.
Since mid-2017 favorable assessments of Mrs. Trump have increased nine points, while the share with unfavorable opinions has remained unchanged.
Partisanship is a major factor in all assessments of the Trump family, even for the First Lady. Democrats like Mrs. Trump (23%) better than her other family members, but two-thirds of Democrats remain negative about her. Democrats feel differently about others in the family: only one in ten Democrats have favorable opinions of the President’s adult sons, Donald Trump, Jr., and Eric Trump, and of his son-in-law Jared Kushner. 15% of Democrats are favorable towards the President’s daughter Ivanka Trump; 76% are unfavorable. Among all adults, the male members of the Trump family (including the President himself) are more disliked than liked; fewer give positive ratings to the President’s son-in-law.
Men like Mrs. Trump more than women do, although that is mostly explained by the gender difference in partisanship. Nearly as many men in this poll describe themselves as Republicans as say they are Democrats; women favor the Democratic Party by 14 points, 39% to 25%.
Kushner came under scrutiny recently for the manner in which he received a top secret security clearance. The charge is that the President ordered for Kushner’s clearance level against the advice of his intelligence officials (that is something a president has the power to authorize). In this poll, the issue seems to matter more to Democrats than to Republicans. 40% of Democrats say they have “heard a lot” about the security clearance debate, while less than half that percentage of Republicans (17%) say the same. But many regard the Kushner clearance as a real problem: nearly six in ten overall (and nearly a third of Republicans) say it’s a serious problem if the President ordered staff to give Kushner a clearance over the concerns of intelligence officials.
