New UC Irvine survey shows Orange County is unhappy with Trump and Newsom – Orange County Register

Orange County residents aren’t very happy — politically speaking, that is.

They’re not keen on the job performance of either President Donald Trump or Gov. Gavin Newsom. And most think both the country and the state are not on the right track. They’re not even thrilled with the politics of the county.

These findings, in a new UC Irvine survey of 1,202 local adults, reflect ongoing division in what has become one of the nation’s most politically split counties. The latest tally of local voter registration breaks down to 36.4% Democrats, 33.9% Republicans and 23.3% who are listed as no party preference, according to the California secretary of state.

Put another way: With the 2026 midterm primary vote about a month away, Orange County is still purple.

And political experts say the frustrations reflected in the UCI survey could offer a roadmap for how successful candidates might engage voters and shape policy proposals.

“As one of the very few purple counties in America, what happens here in Orange County is a reflection of what’s going on nationwide,” Jon B. Gould, poll director and dean of the UCI School of Ecology, said. “If so many voters here are dissatisfied, that should be a big warning sign to this administration that there is a problem they need to address — and soon.”

When it comes to Trump, 62% of locals disapprove of the president’s performance, while just 35% approve.

Of course, those numbers change by party; 95% of local Democrats disapprove of Trump, while 84% of Republicans give him a thumbs up. Independents, however, lean negative, with 70% disapproving.

Locals are just as angry about the state of the state’s politics, with just 38% approving and 55% disapproving of Newsom’s job performance, according to the UCI survey.

Views on Newsom, as they do with Trump, fluctuate by political party, though the differences aren’t as stark. UCI found 87% of local Republicans disapprove of the governor, while 70% of Democrats hold a favorable view of his leadership of California. Independents lean negative, with 57% disapproving of Newsom and only 30% approving.

When it comes to the overall direction of the country and the state, most locals say both are on the wrong track.

UCI found 62% of county residents believe the country isn’t faring well. But that feeling, the survey found, isn’t bipartisan; Democrats (88%) and independents (66%) say the country is in bad shape, while 62% of Republicans believe the opposite.

The UCI poll found a similar divide — with different parties playing different roles — on the state of California. Overall, 57% of locals say the state is headed in the wrong direction, with Republicans (83%) and independents (57%) driving that number, while Democrats are nearly split, with 49% holding a favorable view of the state’s political direction.

The UCI poll also asked locals for their views on Orange County politics.

On that front, just 41%, overall, say the county is on the right track, while 36% say it’s not.  Democrats nearly mirror those results (40% approval; 32% disapproval) while Republicans (46% vs. 39%) are slightly more bullish on the county. Independents, according to the UCI poll, break dead-even (37% vs. 37%) on the direction of local politics.

Such broad and deep political dissatisfaction isn’t new in Orange County, Gould said, noting that UCI’s 2024 survey found similar results.

What’s different, though, are the reasons.

Before the 2024 election, with President Joe Biden in office, Democrats were fine with the direction of the country and OK with the direction of California, Gould said. Republicans, meanwhile, were quite displeased with both the U.S. and California. While the latest poll shows Democrats are still relatively OK with the state of California, sentiments have flipped on the national level.

“Republicans and Democrats continue to see the world differently,” Gould said. “Especially when it comes to evaluating their leaders.”

What about the midterms?

So, with ballots slated to be mailed to every registered California voter in about a month, how might UCI’s survey findings affect the midterms?

Well, that differs depending on whether you’re talking about the gubernatorial race or congressional contests. Again, Orange County shows its purple stripes.

Nearly 1 in 3 county residents still don’t back a specific candidate for governor, and a small faction of locals say they don’t plan to vote on that race, according to the UCI survey.

But when pushed to actually make a selection, the two main Republicans in the gubernatorial race, former Fox News host Steve Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, come out on top, 23% and 14% respectively.

They were followed by candidates in the much more crowded field of Democrats, including billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer and former Rep. Katie Porter (who once represented a slice of Orange County), who are tied at 14%; followed by Rep. Eric Swalwell, at 9%; former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, at 7%; and former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, each at 4%.

The UCI findings largely mirror what statewide polling has found in the governor’s race, including a survey released earlier this week from the California Democratic Party that showed Hilton and Bianco in the lead, followed by Swalwell, Steyer and Porter.

No candidate is running away with overwhelming support among voters ahead of the June 2 primary.

That has led to concerns within Democratic circles that Bianco and Hilton could lock out Democrats in the upcoming race, since California election rules let the top two vote-getters advance to the general election, regardless of political party.

Both polls — from UCI and from the California Democrats — were taken before April 5, when Trump waded into the race and threw his support behind Hilton.

Still, the rise of two GOP candidates might boost local Republican turnout. The UCI survey found that 71% of local Republicans say they’ll “certainly” vote in the race for governor, while another 18% say they’re “very likely” to do so. On the Democratic side, 63% say they’re “certain” to vote and 19% say they’re “very likely” to vote.

Independents are more tepid: only 39% say they were absolutely certain to vote, while 20% consider the prospect very likely.

“This dynamic helps explain why Republican candidates currently occupy the top positions (in the governor race), even in a closely divided electorate,” UCI’s poll explained.

That flips a bit, though, when it comes to sentiments about congressional races in Orange County.

The UCI survey found Democrats hold a 13-point advantage over Republicans in a generic congressional ballot. That spread exceeds the party identification gap, UCI’s report noted, suggesting Democrats might get more support from outside of their base in this type of contest.

“My suspicion is, when we ask about the primary race, folks are zeroing in on how they feel about Newsom and how they feel about the choices for governor. For Republicans, it doesn’t matter who is the candidate, especially if at least one is in the top two,” said Gould.

“Democrats aren’t jumping over the moon about any of the (gubernatorial) candidates, but they will eventually get behind them,” Gould added.

“But in the fall, they are thinking about the state of the nation. At that point, Democrats want to come out and send a message that they are done with Trump.”

A successful candidate, Gould said, would tap into the broader sense of voter discomfort and distaste, and tailor their platform to issues that will engage voters.

“The longer this goes on, the distaste people have, they’re beginning to feel like maybe government isn’t the right answer,” Gould said.

“The system is broken, which is to some extent how we got Trump in the first place.”

A smattering of other findings

The UCI poll also asked Orange County residents to weigh in on capitalism versus socialism.

Overall, 54% of those surveyed hold a positive view of capitalism, while 35% favor socialism. However, that drastically changes by age.

Take Gen-Z (the oldest of whom is 26) and Millennials (the oldest of whom is 45), for example. A plurality of Gen Z adults favor socialism (42%) over capitalism (35%), while Millennials are roughly split, 45% for each.

But Gen X voters (the oldest of whom is 61) and Baby Boomers (the oldest of whom is now 80) still hold positive views of capitalism, with 63% and 73%, respectively, favoring it over socialism, 28% and 25%.

The UCI survey also found that younger residents are particularly negative (78% disapprove) in their feelings about Trump, whereas local seniors (52% approve) are offering “modest support” of the president. White residents (48%) are the most supportive of Trump, while smaller numbers of Asian (33%) and Latino (22%) residents approve of the president.

Newsom fares relatively evenly across the board by age groups. He gets his highest approval from residents between the ages of 30 and 45 years old (41% approval), and the least (61% disapproval) from people 62 and older. Exactly 6 in 10 voters from the middle of those cohorts — residents between ages 46 and 61 — also disapprove of Newsom, while younger voters, ages 18 to 29, are relatively split, with about 48% disapproving of the governor.

Broken down by race, 40% of Asian and Latino residents have positive views of Newsom, while 35% of White residents feel the same.

Orange County residents were surveyed from March 24-31, in both English and Spanish, and recruited by both text message and online. The survey’s margin of error is 3.3%.