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‘Trump Regret’ Surges to Record High as 1 in 5 of His Own Voters Now Call It ‘a Mistake’
Something has quietly shifted in America — and the numbers prove it. A record one in five Americans who cast their vote for Donald Trump in the 2024 election now say they regret that decision, according to a new Navigator Research poll. ContentsTariffs Are the Breaking PointThe Supreme Court...
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Something has quietly shifted in America — and the numbers prove it. A record one in five Americans who cast their vote for Donald Trump in the 2024 election now say they regret that decision, according to a new Navigator Research poll.
Contents
- Tariffs Are the Breaking Point
- The Supreme Court Stepped In
- What the Dial Groups Told Us
- The Regret Is Real — And Growing
Tariffs Are the Breaking Point
The tariff issue has become the single biggest driver of voter discontent with the Trump administration. A majority of Americans — 59% — now view tariffs unfavorably. That includes 85% of Democrats, 69% of independents, and even 31% of Republicans. What makes that last number especially striking is what it says about the cracks forming inside the GOP itself. Among Republicans who don’t identify with the “MAGA” movement, tariffs are viewed negatively by a 14-point margin — 34% favorable versus 48% unfavorable.Among the Trump voters who now say they regret their vote, 57% hold negative views of tariffs. It’s a clean, direct line: the very people who helped elect Trump are now turning against him — and tariffs are the reason they say so most often.
The financial pain is real, and it’s being felt everywhere. 70% of Americans believe Trump’s tariff policy is raising the price of everyday things they buy, with 41% saying their costs have gone up “a lot.” This isn’t a partisan talking point — it crosses party lines completely. 88% of Democrats, 74% of independents, and 51% of Republicans all say tariffs have made their lives more expensive. When half of your own party believes your signature economic policy is hitting them in their wallets, that isn’t a messaging problem. That is a policy problem.
The Supreme Court Stepped In
The Supreme Court of the United States recently struck down many of Trump’s tariffs — and the American public’s response is clear: good. Over three-in-five Americans (62%) believe the Court made the right decision, with 45% saying they feel that way “strongly.” That level of conviction isn’t something you usually see around dry legal rulings. It tells you just how personally this issue has landed for ordinary people trying to manage their household budgets.Even among groups that typically lean conservative, support for the Court’s ruling is solid. 62% of independents agree SCOTUS got it right, and a plurality of non-MAGA Republicans — by a net margin of +12 — side with the Court over the President on this one.
Now that the tariffs have been struck down, most Americans don’t want them coming back. 52% believe Trump should end tariffs entirely, while only 33% think he should try to put them back in place through other means. Even rural Americans — a group that voted heavily for Trump in 2024 — support ending tariffs by a net +7 margin. Blue-collar workers, the very people Trump promised to fight for and protect, support ending tariffs by a net +9 margin. These are not the numbers of a president who still commands the full trust of his working-class base.
What the Dial Groups Told Us
If any doubt remained about how deeply Americans feel about Trump’s tariff agenda, a real-time experiment at his State of the Union address made it undeniably clear. Navigator Research ran a live dial group with 34 Arizona voters as Trump delivered his speech. Every time the president mentioned tariffs, the dials went down — and they stayed down as he outlined ways he might reimpose them without needing congressional approval.Arizona is a swing state Trump won in 2024. These are his voters. And they were turning dials down in real time. That is not a small thing.
The Regret Is Real — And Growing
What this public opinion poll reveals isn’t just a rough week for Trump’s approval rating. It reveals a pattern. Month after month, the share of his own voters who say they made a mistake keeps rising. The top three negative stories his voters say they’re hearing about the administration are “tariffs,” “Epstein files,” and “Supreme Court” — and of those three, tariffs hit hardest among the regretters, by a wide margin.There’s still time for the political picture to change. But the gap between what Trump promised his voters — lower prices, economic strength, a country that truly works for working people — and what they’re actually living through is no longer something that spin can cover. Millions of Americans who voted for Trump are now sitting with a feeling that has a name: regret. And for the very first time in his second term, that feeling has hit an all-time high.
Data cited in this article is drawn from a Navigator Research / Global Strategy Group survey of 1,000 registered voters conducted February 19–22, 2026, with a margin of error of ±3.1 percentage points.
