BURSTMore than half of Americans approve of the way President-elect Trump is handling the presidential transition, a new CNN poll showed.
The survey, conducted by SSRS, shows that 55 percent of respondents approve of Trump's handling of his transition into the White House, compared to 66 percent who approved of the way President Biden handled his transition in January 2021. But it's a slight uptick from the last time Trump was taking office in 2016, when 46 percent approved in November that year.
The poll also found that 54 percent of Americans expect Trump to do a good job once he officially returns to the Oval Office. Sixty-one percent said the same of Biden in January 2021.
Nearly 40 percent of respondents said they have confidence in Trump to handle the economy and immigration policy, while 37 percent also have a lot of confidence in Trump's ability to handle the war between Russia and Ukraine.
On the skeptical side, 35 percent said they had no real confidence in Trump's ability to deal with the economy, 38 don't trust him on Russia and Ukraine, and 40 percent don't trust his ability to deal with immigration policy.
Roughly one-quarter have confidence that the president-elect will appoint the best people to office, while three-quarters of Americans said that Trump should appoint people who are qualified for each role over their willingness to implement his policies, the poll found.
This polling comes as Trump has faced backlash for some of his recent appointments to his administration, including Pete Hegseth as Pentagon chief, Tusli Gabbard as intelligence director and Kash Patel to lead the FBI.
Respondents were evenly divided on Trump's decision to have Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy lead the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), with 49 percent approving and 50 percent disapproving, the poll found.
The poll was conducted from Dec. 5 to 8 and surveyed 1,011 U.S. adults aged 18 and older. The margin of error was 3.8 percentage points.