Democrats spent four years telling America that Donald Trump was the most unpopular president in history.
NBC just asked 1,000 voters who they actually like – and Trump beat every Democrat on the list.
Find out which 2028 front-runner came in just above Iran.
NBC News Poll: Trump Favorability Beats Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom and AOC
NBC conducted this survey between February 27 and March 3, polling 1,000 registered voters nationally.
Trump's positive rating sits at 41 percent.
Stephen Colbert – the man whose entire television career is now built around mocking Trump every single night – pulls 35 percent.
Harris, who told podcaster Sharon McMahon in February that she "might" launch another presidential bid, clocks in at 34 percent.
She lost to Trump in 2024.
She is now less popular than the man she lost to.
Then there's Gavin Newsom.
The governor of California has spent months barnstorming battleground states, attacking Trump at every turn, and fielding calls from Hollywood executives and Silicon Valley donors begging him to run for president.
Political insiders have crowned him the 2028 Democratic front-runner.
His positive rating is 27 percent.
That puts Newsom in the company of Iran at 8 percent and Artificial Intelligence at 26 percent – the three least popular subjects NBC tested.
Democrats are preparing to nominate a man who ranks just above ChatGPT.
AOC comes in at 31 percent positive.
ICE Favorability Tops the Democratic Party in New National Survey
For nearly a decade, Democrats ran on one message about Immigration and Customs Enforcement: these people are monsters.
"Abolish ICE" wasn't a fringe slogan.
It was mainstream.
Kamala Harris co-sponsored legislation to dismantle the agency.
AOC called ICE officers fascists.
Democrat-run cities passed sanctuary laws specifically to obstruct ICE operations.
The left spent ten years and incalculable political capital turning ICE into a symbol of cruelty.
The result?
ICE's positive rating in this poll is 38 percent – higher than Harris, higher than Newsom, higher than the entire Democratic Party at 30 percent.
The agency Democrats tried to abolish is now more popular than the party that tried to abolish it.
Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi built their entire 2026 midterm strategy around opposition to Trump's immigration enforcement.
They were counting on ICE being a villain that would drive voters to their side.
Instead, they are heading into a midterm election as the party Americans trust less than the agency they spent years telling everyone to hate.
What the NBC Poll Means for the 2028 Democratic Primary
Here's the number the political media is barely covering.
JD Vance's poll favorability rating sits at 38 percent positive in this same survey – tied with ICE, second only to the Pope at 42 percent.
Vance has been attacked more relentlessly than almost any figure in modern politics.
Mocked for his personal life.
Savaged daily on The View.
Made into a punchline by the same Stephen Colbert who just lost a popularity contest to Donald Trump.
Vance is still more popular than every Democrat being groomed for 2028.
Newsom and Harris are both underwater with the general public before a single primary vote has been cast.
That's not a polling blip – it's the continuation of a collapse that has been building for over a year.
NBC's own polling previously recorded the Democratic Party's positive rating at just 27 percent, the lowest since the network started asking the question in 1990.
A Quinnipiac survey found Democrats in Congress hit a record-low job approval of just 18 percent heading into 2026.
The Wall Street Journal reported Democrats had earned their worst voter rating in 35 years.
The party that controls nothing in Washington is somehow getting less popular the longer it's out of power.
Democrats will say it's early, that fundamentals favor the opposition in midterms, and that Trump's own numbers being underwater is the real story.
Maybe.
But you cannot build a winning coalition around candidates who lose a popularity contest to a government agency your own party spent a decade trying to destroy.
And you cannot win the White House in 2028 with the man who ranks just above Iran.
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Sources:
- Jerome Hudson, "Poll: Trump More Popular Than Stephen Colbert, Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris, AOC," Breitbart, March 9, 2026.
- Nick Arama, "NBC Poll Is Truly Funny – and Dems Are Going to Hate It," RedState, March 9, 2026.
- Jeff Charles, "Trump Gets Surprising Boost As New Poll Flips 2026 Narrative on Its Head," Townhall, March 9, 2026.
- "NBC News Poll: Dems More Disliked Than Trump, ICE," American Thinker, March 9, 2026.
- "Voters Give Democrats In Congress A Record Low Job Approval," Quinnipiac University Poll, December 17, 2025.