About 3 in 10 are highly confident in Trump on Cabinet, spending or military oversight: AP-NORC poll

WASHINGTON — Americans may have recently elected Donald Trump to a second term, but that doesn’t mean they have much confidence in his ability to pick well-qualified people for his Cabinet — or to effectively manage government spending, the military and the White House, according to a new poll from the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Like Trump appoints his appointees to key positions in his government — some of whom could face tough confirmation battles in the Senate even with Republicans in control — about half of American adults have “no confidence at all” in Trump’s ability to appoint well-qualified people to his cabinet and other high government positions.

The appointment process and his lightning speed have represented a manifestation of Trump’s promise to voters to be a disruptive force in the country and a return to the chaotic era of administration that defined his first four years in the Oval Office. But only about three in 10 Americans are “extremely” or “very” confident that Trump will pick qualified people to serve in his administration. A majority of Republicans say they have a lot of confidence.

Trump has promised to wake up Washington with an aggressive approach that Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGEa non-governmental task force charged with finding ways to do this firing federal employeescut programs and destroy federal regulations, led by a billionaire Elon Musk and fellow entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.

Beyond his appointments, however, the survey shows a similar level of confidence in Trump’s ability to manage government spending and perform other key presidential duties, including overseeing the military and the White House — where Trump suffered during his first term in office. significant high-level staff turnoverespecially in the early days.

That’s not quite the same challenge faced four years ago by President Joe Biden, who took office with more confidence in some areas than others.

That low confidence is generally caused by Democrats and independents. A large share of Democrats are suspicious of Trump’s abilities on all these fronts — about three-quarters say they are “not at all confident” that he will be able to effectively manage the White House, government spending or the military, or that he will make a good choice. -qualified people for his cabinet.

About four-in-ten independents, meanwhile, say they are “somewhat” or “not at all” confident in Trump’s ability to carry out each of these responsibilities, while about two-in-ten are “extremely” or “very” confident.

Confidence among Republicans is higher, but not as overwhelming as Democrats’ doubts. About six-in-ten Republicans have “extremely” or “very” confidence in Trump’s ability to choose well-qualified people to serve in his Cabinet and manage the White House, military and government spending. About 2 in 10 Republicans are “moderately confident” and another 2 in 10 are “somewhat” or “not at all” confident in either case.

When Biden took office in 2021, people also harbored some doubts about how he would carry out some key responsibilities — but unlike Trump, where concerns are fairly evenly spread across the various tasks, they were more confident in Biden’s ability to do some things to do than others. . When he entered the White House, Biden had served eight years as President Barack Obama’s vice president, as well as decades in the U.S. Senate, and he ran the 2020 campaign largely based on those years of experience.

A separate AP-NORC poll The survey conducted shortly after Biden took office – which asked the question slightly differently – found a higher level of confidence in Biden’s ability to appoint well-qualified people to his Cabinet and run the White House than in his ability to manage military and government expenditure.

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The poll of 1,251 adults was conducted December 5-9, 2024, using a sample from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults totals plus or minus 3.7 percentage points.