President Donald Trump spent much of this week’s State of the Union address assuring Americans that “the roaring economy is roaring like never before” and that “this is the golden age of America.”
Virginians aren’t buying it.
The latest Roanoke College poll on Virginians’ feelings about the economy finds only marginal improvement, at best, on how they see the economy. Overall, most Virginians don’t see the economy improving under Trump’s second term.
While this poll — separate from the survey that Roanoke College released earlier this week about redistricting — deals only with economic matters, the results show how challenging the political terrain this fall could be for Republicans in the congressional midterms.
Here’s a summary of the results:
Three-fourths of Virginians don’t see the financial situation improving
The poll asked a variation of the question that boosted Ronald Reagan in the 1980 presidential campaign and sank President Jimmy Carter: Are you better off or worse off financially than you were a year ago? In this sampling:
Better off: 24.1%
Same: 38.6%
Worse off: 37.3%
The good news for Trump: That’s the highest “better off” reading in the Roanoke College poll during his second term.
The not-so-good news: That change is within the margin of error of 3.3 percentage points from the previous Roanoke College polls taken during his second term, so it could just be a statistical blip.
In the previous survey in December:
Better off: 22.9%
Same: 37.8%
Worse off: 39.3%
Even if that slight increase is an accurate reading, the 24.1% who see themselves better off is still lower than it was during all but one survey taken when Joe Biden was president.
When Biden took office, Virginians were more optimistic. Eight months into Biden’s term, their mood was improving: 31.8% saw themselves better off than the year before. Then inflation revved up, and the public’s mood soured. By May 2022, only 20.2% saw themselves better off, the lowest reading of Biden’s presidency. After that, things recovered somewhat (emphasis on the somewhat), and for the remainder of Biden’s term, the Roanoke College poll found between 24.3% and 28.4% felt themselves better off. The last Roanoke College poll of Biden’s term, in November 2024, found that 28.3% found themselves better off.
Under Trump, that sank to the 21% range and just now has edged up to 24.1%. Unless those numbers improve, Republicans may find it difficult to run on a “golden age” platform this fall.
Nearly half think the country’s economy is worse off than a year ago
In a related question, the poll asks how respondents see the national economy compared to a year ago:
Better off: 21.0%
Same: 30.0%
Worse off: 48.9%
The good news for Trump: That “worse off” reading is improving. In December, 51.4% said it was worse off. In August, 54.4% said it was worse off, so the trendlines are favorable for Republicans.
Still, that’s a lot of people who see the economy going in the wrong direction. That reading is also higher than when Biden left office. In the final Roanoke College poll of 2024, the survey found that 38.6% saw the economy likely to be worse off in a year’s time.
Republicans will need to make a “stay the course” argument that the benefits of Trump’s policies haven’t fully kicked in yet. The question is how much voters will believe that.
Optimism is not returning
Incumbents generally need voters to feel optimistic — to believe that even if things aren’t great now, they will be. Virginians aren’t feeling optimistic, though, and nothing Trump has done during his second term seems to be moving that needle.
The Roanoke College poll asked respondents to look to the future: “Do you think that a year from now you and your family … will be better off financially, worse off, or just about the same as now?”
Better off: 31.0%
Same: 40.5%
Worse off: 28.5%
Those numbers haven’t really changed throughout Trump’s second term. If anything, they’re down a bit. In February 2025, just after Trump had taken office, 34.4% said they saw themselves better off a year from now. That year has now passed, and they don’t seem to feel that way. The only thing that’s changed is that fewer people see themselves as worse off and more see themselves as about the same. That constitutes a reduction in pessimism but not an increase in optimism.
While the immediate news here may be bad, in political terms, for Republicans, we can also flip that around: Even if Democrats were to regain control of Congress this fall, they couldn’t enact their policies. The most they could do would be to stop some (but not all) of Trump’s policies, so Democrats can’t realistically promise to make things better with their own agenda. For voters who aren’t feeling optimistic under Trump, that may be yet another reason not to feel optimistic about much of anything.
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