President Donald Trump’s approval rating slipped slightly but remains in net positive territory as voters report that they think he’s doing a better job than his predecessor Joe Biden.

Pollsters also found approval of the Democratic Party at a near-record low, according to new data.

A national poll of 2,746 registered voters released Monday by the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University, the Harris Poll, and HarrisX, found that the president has the support of 49% of the electorate, compared to the 52% seen in its February survey. With 46% of polled voters saying they strongly or somewhat disapprove of the president’s work over the first 10 weeks of his term, that leaves Trump with a net-positive rating of +3%.

While the poll found that “expectations of Trump have dropped” since his inauguration, with 42% of those polled saying he’s doing “worse than expected,” 54% of voters say that by and large they feel he is doing a better job than former President Biden.

“There’s still strong support for most of Trump’s policies while Democratic Party approval continues to nosedive,” Mark Penn, co-director of the Harvard CAPS, said in a statement. “Opinions are still in formation as people are unsure how tariffs will affect the economy, but voters generally believe he is doing a better job than Biden.”

A full 80% of those polled reported they are in favor of the president’s push to see “illegal immigrants who have committed crimes” deported from the U.S., and almost three out of four voters indicated that they want the U.S. border closed and that they approve of Trump’s efforts at “eliminating fraud and waste in government expenditures.”

Not every policy is so popular. Trump’s plan to place tariffs on goods entering the U.S. from China, Mexico, and Canada saw less support — just 50% — while fewer than two in five voters approve of his attempt to rebrand the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.

A slight majority of those polled — 52% — felt that it should be within the president’s power “to deport suspected members of Venezuelan criminal gangs without a court trial,” while an even larger majority — 56% — said that the “administration is exceeding its authority and getting hit with fair injunctions restraining its powers.”

Just over half of polled voters — again 52% — said that federal judges are acting appropriately when attempting to halt Trump’s deportation plans, and 50% said that a judge “has the authority to turn around military planes under suspicion of wrongful immigration procedures.”

However, almost seven out of 10 voters said that any substantive questions about immigration should be answered by a “panel of judges rather than a single federal judge.”

Voters are also split on whether people residing in the U.S. on a student visa are afforded freedom of speech rights under the First Amendment. The question comes after a Tufts University PhD student studying under a visa was arrested by ICE agents in Massachusetts, accused of supporting Hamas, and shipped to a detention facility in Louisiana.

When asked, “should migrants here legally on student visas have the same First Amendment rights as U.S. citizens, or should they be subject to deportation if they support causes that are counter to U.S. foreign policy,” or “if they voice support for entities designated as terrorist groups by the U.S. government,” just over half of those polled said that those students enjoy the same rights as any U.S. citizen.

Voters were less split when asked if green-card holders should have First Amendment protections if they “support causes that are counter to U.S. foreign policy” or “voice support for entities designated as terrorist groups by the U.S. government,” with three out of five voters saying they should be allowed to speak their minds.

The same number of polled voters — three in five — said that “illegal immigrants should not have the same First Amendment rights as U.S. citizens and should be subject to deportation if they support causes counter to U.S. foreign policy.”

But any chagrin felt over Trump’s hard-line immigration policies has not translated to support for the other side.

According to the poll, just 37% of voters hold the Democratic Party in a favorable light. You could say that’s the lowest Democratic approval rating Harvard’s pollsters have found since February of 2018, but only if you leave out last month, when just 36% of polled voters said they approved of the left.

More than half of Democratic voters, and a broad majority of all voters, believe that the party needs to go in a more moderate direction, according to the poll, and most voters think that the party needs politicians who will not arbitrarily oppose Trump’s policies just because of the source.

“71% of voters say the Democratic Party needs new moderate figures to lead the party into the 2026 midterms and 2028 election, including 57% of Democrat voters,” pollsters wrote. “55% of voters support moderate Democrats who are willing to compromise with Trump on issues (Democrats: 27%; Republicans: 78%; Independents: 59%) over Democrats who want to fight harder against the administration.”

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