CNN’s chief data analyst Harry Enten on Thursday revealed that registered voters have increasingly favored Donald Trump’s handling of crime with the president’s takeover of the Washington, D.C., police force now in effect.
Enten highlighted polling data showing how Trump’s net approval rating (percent approval minus percent disapproval) on crime has increased from -13 in March 2024 (in an analysis of his first term) to +1 this month.
The latter polling figure, he noted, doesn’t take into account the situation in the nation’s capital but does account for Trump federalizing the California National Guard to respond to mostly peaceful protests against his immigration agenda in Los Angeles.
Aside from federalizing the police force in Washington, Trump also deployed hundreds of National Guard troops to fight what he described as “bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse” (in reality, reported violent crime is down in the nation’s capital).
“I think that Democrats have to get it around their heads that Americans are far more hawkish on crime than they think that they are,” Enten told CNN’s Kate Bolduan.
