President Donald Trump’s hard line on crime is a winner with American voters.
That’s the news from CNN chief pollster Harry Enten, one of the few voices on the liberal news network willing to provide a dose of reality to its blue-bubble viewers.
And as much as liberals might hate the numbers, they probably hate even more Enten’s description of Trump’s status as it compares to former President Joe Biden.
Trump, Enten said on CNN’s “News Central” on Thursday, “is like Air Jordan towering over Joe Biden when it comes to their handling of crime.”
Re: DC… Americans have liked Trump’s approach on crime. He’s Air Jordan (+1 pts net approval) compared to Biden last year (-26 pts net approval).
The GOP leads by 16 pts on crime over Dems. The country is a lot more hawkish on crime than many Dems would like to admit. pic.twitter.com/tGXpKMOrwC
— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) August 14, 2025
The polling numbers are from surveys taken before Trump’s headline-generating crackdown on crime in the District of Columbia, Enten said. But they do cover earlier periods this year, including Trump’s decision to send the National Guard and federal troops to Los Angeles to quell rioting targeting Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids.
“Americans, for the most part, actually view Trump favorably. Crime is one of Trump’s best issues,” Enten said. “It’s one of the reasons why he wants to talk about crime — because it favors him.”
Trump only has a net positive of one point in the polling Enten noted, but that’s way up over the his standing in March a year ago, when when polls showed his handling of crime underwater by 13 points.
In other words, Trump’s approach to crime has gotten more popular since Americans have seen it in action.
That’s going to be disheartening for Democrats. But Enten has been passing along disheartening news to liberals for some time.
The continuing cloud over the case of the late convicted sex criminal Jeffery Epstein hasn’t seriously damaged Trump’s standing with his base, Enten reported in July (no doubt a blow to Democratic hopes).
Days earlier, he’d detailed how badly the American left’s non-stop message of climate alarmism is failing with the American public.
Earlier this month, he all but drove a stake through the heart of any potential presidential run by former Vice President Kamala Harris.
(Granted, that might not have been terrible news to all Democrats from a purely political point of view, but it undeniably underscored the resonating sense of failure of the Biden presidency.)
Overall, Enten’s record of analysis has to make him one of the left’s least-favorite voices on CNN. (He’s no doubt well behind conservative commentator Scott Jennings in that regard, but still in the conversation.)
And Enten’s forecast of what the numbers might mean for Trump in the future was not the kind to bring comfort for liberal CNN viewers.
“So Americans vastly prefer Donald Trump’s approach to crime than they did to Joe Biden’s,” Enten said.
“And again, I think it gets back to the point that Americans are far more hawkish on crime than a lot of Democrats want to admit.”
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