45% Say Trump Has Kept His Campaign Promises More Than Most

Voters remain dismissive of politicians and their campaign promises but think President Trump has delivered more than most.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that just 16% of Likely U.S. Voters believe most politicians keep their campaign promises. Seventy percent (70%) say they do not. Fourteen percent (14%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Still, that’s a noticeable improvement from the four percent (4%) who said most politicians kept their campaign promises when we first asked this question in November 2009.

But then 45% of voters believe Trump has kept his campaign promise more than most presidents. Forty percent (40%) say he’s kept his promises less than most. This compares to 38% and 33% in March 2018. Twelve percent (12%) rate his performance about the same as most presidents.

Democrats are the most critical, with 66% saying the GOP president has kept his campaign promises less than most presidents. But 68% of his fellow Republicans and a plurality (47%) of voters not affiliated with either major party think Trump has kept his promises more than most.

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The survey of 1,000 Likely U.S. Voters was conducted August 18-19, 2020 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Trump’s a solid conservative now as far as most voters are concerned but not as right-wing as Mitt Romney was when he ran for the presidency eight years ago.

Democrats (23%) are a lot more likely than Republicans (14%) and unaffiliated voters (9%) to believe that most politicians keep their campaign promises. Sizable majorities in nearly every demographic category disagree.

Only 33% of blacks think Trump has kept his campaign promises more than most presidents, compared to 45% of whites and 52% of other minority voters.

Eighty-nine percent (89%) of voters who Strongly Approve of the job Trump is doing believe he has keep his campaign promises more than most. Among those who Strongly Disapprove of his job performance, 82% say he’s kept his promises less than most.

Among voters who think most politicians don’t keep their campaign promises, 48% say Trump is doing better than most presidents; 38% disagree.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden leads Trump by four points in Rasmussen Reports’ latest weekly White House Watch survey.

The growth of state primaries has largely reduced national political conventions to rah-rah sessions for the party faithful, but one-in-five voters say a convention has changed their vote.

Additional information from this survey and a full demographic breakdown are available to Platinum Members only.

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