New Yahoo News/YouGov poll: Just 29% of Americans have a favorable opinion of Matt Gaetz, Trump’s attorney general pick

A new Yahoo News/YouGov poll shows that only 29% of Americans have a favorable opinion of Matt Gaetz, President-elect Donald Trump’s beleaguered nominee for U.S. attorney general.

A greater number of Americans (37%) see Gaetz unfavorably. Another third (34%) are not yet sure what they think.

The survey of 1,612 U.S. adults was conducted from Nov. 14 to 18 — shortly after Trump announced Gaetz as his pick but before news broke Tuesday that a hacker had accessed sworn testimony from a woman who claims to have had sex with Gaetz when she was 17.

The Justice Department previously investigated but declined to charge Gaetz for allegedly having sex with an underage girl and transporting her across state lines. The House Ethics Committee also produced a report examining allegations of Gaetz’s sexual misconduct and illicit drug use that may play a part in his confirmation hearings as lawmakers in both parties call for its public release.

The 42-year-old Gaetz, a former Florida congressman, resigned from the House last week after Trump nominated him to be America’s chief law enforcement officer. He has denied the allegations against him.

The new Yahoo News/YouGov poll is not all bad news for Trump. The rest of his high-profile nominees — entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy for the newly created Department of Government Efficiency; anti-vax crusader Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., for the Department of Health and Human Services; South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem for the Department of Homeland Security; Florida Sen. Marco Rubio for the Department of State; former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence; and Fox News pundit Pete Hegseth for Department of Defense — are in better shape than Gaetz, with favorable ratings higher than their unfavorable ratings.

Overall, more Americans approve (45%) than disapprove (37%) of "the people Donald Trump has nominated so far to serve in his Cabinet."

Yet net approval of Trump’s nominees is largely the result of overwhelmingly positive numbers from Republicans (85% approve, 5% disapprove). Among Democrats, disapproval (75%) outpaces approval (12%), while independents are closely divided (41% approve, 39% disapprove).

In addition, net approval fades entirely among Americans with intense opinions, with “strong” disapproval of Trump’s nominees (29%) slightly exceeding strong approval (25%). Democrats express strong disapproval (61%) more often than Republicans express strong approval (53%), and more independents disapprove strongly (31%) than approve strongly (21%).

Taken as a whole — and considered in light of the fact that more than a third of Americans say they’re not yet sure how they feel about Gaetz, Ramaswamy, Noem, Gabbard and Hegseth — these numbers suggest Trump’s nominees could be in for a bumpy ride.

Many are already surrounded by controversy: Gabbard for her sympathetic views toward dictators such as Syrian President Bashar Assad and Russia’s Vladimir Putin; Hegseth for sexual misconduct allegations of his own; Kennedy for his unorthodox stances on everything from vaccines to raw milk to fluoridated water.

Even now, just two weeks after the election, a plurality of Americans (39%) say Musk — who has reportedly spoken to Russian, Ukrainian and Iranian leaders on Trump’s behalf — has “too much influence” with the incoming president. Meanwhile, 36% say Musk’s influence is “about right” while only 4% say he doesn’t have enough influence.

Meanwhile, Kennedy has seen his net negative rating from August (38% favorable, 44% unfavorable) flip to a net positive rating today (46% favorable, 37% unfavorable) almost entirely due to a 17-point increase (from 60% to 77%) in his favorability among Republicans after his endorsement of Trump. Will those numbers hold, however, if Senate confirmation hearings focus on how Trump’s would-be secretary of Health and Human Services strongly favors abortion rights and single-payer health care?

Still, none of Trump’s nominees garners as little support as Gaetz. Just 52% of Republicans view him favorably, for instance — compared to 61% for Gabbard, a former Democrat.

According to the New York Times, Trump has “admitted” in “his private conversations over the past few days” that “his besieged choice for attorney general … has less than even odds of being confirmed by the Senate.” Instead, the newspaper reported, Trump’s hope is that “even if Mr. Gaetz does not make it, the standard for an acceptable candidate will have shifted so much that the Senate may simply approve his other nominees who have appalled much of Washington.”

This, needless to say, represents a break with tradition. During his transition period in late 2020 and early 2021, then-President-elect Biden followed in his predecessors’ footsteps and picked well-vetted, mainstream nominees. Americans approved his approach by a 57% to 37% margin, according to a Pew Research poll conducted at the time.

Trump tried a similarly risk-averse strategy in late 2016 and early 2017, appointing people like the four-star general Jim Mattis, who was confirmed as defense secretary by a bipartisan vote of 98 to 1.

But despite such efforts, just only 40% of Americans approved of Trump’s Cabinet picks at the time; 51% disapproved. Eventually, nearly half of Trump’s former Cabinet members refused to endorse his 2024 reelection bid.

Perhaps that explains why Trump is trying something different the second time around.

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The Yahoo News survey was conducted by YouGov using a nationally representative sample of 1,612 U.S. adults interviewed online from Nov. 14 to 18, 2024. The sample was weighted according to gender, age, race, education, 2024 election turnout and presidential vote, party identification and current voter registration status. Demographic weighting targets come from the 2019 American Community Survey. Party identification is weighted to the estimated distribution at the time of the election (31% Democratic, 32% Republican). Respondents were selected from YouGov’s opt-in panel to be representative of all U.S. adults. The margin of error is approximately 2.6%.