One Factor Serving to Trump’s Approval Ranking: Some Individuals Are Not Paying Consideration

President Trump’s strategy to “flood the zone” may be working to keep his approval rating from sinking even lower.

Voters who have not heard much about some of the many major news events from the first 100 days of Mr. Trump’s second term have a higher opinion of the job he is doing, according to the latest New York Times/Siena College poll. A little under half of the 42 percent of voters who approved of the job Mr. Trump is doing as president said they had not heard much about at least some of the ups and downs of his administration’s decisions.

Mr. Trump has traditionally done well with lower-information voters, so it is perhaps not surprising that they are more inclined to support his presidency. These voters are also notoriously difficult for pollsters to reach, making it challenging to track their exact impact.

And the blitz of news can be hard to follow even for the most engaged voters. In his first 100 days, Mr. Trump signed more executive orders than any other modern president, part of a strategy to make changes at such velocity that people could not possibly pay attention to all of them.

In total, about one-third of voters said they had not heard much about one or more of the major events of Mr. Trump’s first 100 days in office, such as the mistaken deportation of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia to El Salvador, fluctuations in the stock market or cuts made by Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency, also known as DOGE. Still, most Americans say they are closely watching news coming out of the Trump administration — more than the share who were closely watching the early days of the Biden presidency.

Mr. Trump’s highest approval rating was on immigration, though more Americans disapproved than approved of his handling of the issue.

Voters were more likely to approve of how Mr. Trump is handling immigration if they had not heard much about the case of Mr. Abrego Garcia, who the administration acknowledges was mistakenly deported. Officials have insisted he is a member of the MS-13 gang, and have made little effort to help him return to the United States.

Voters who had not heard about this and other immigration-related cases were also more likely to say Mr. Trump’s handling of immigration had been about right or had not gone far enough.

There is a similar pattern when it comes to the economy.

The start of Mr. Trump’s term included the worst drop in the S&P 500 for a new president since 1974, when Gerald R. Ford took over from Richard M. Nixon after the Watergate scandal.

And while most Americans have heard about the stock market fluctuations, 20 percent have heard little about them or nothing at all.

Those voters were much more likely to approve of Mr. Trump’s handling of the economy. Overall, 55 percent who had not heard much about stock market fluctuations approved, compared with 41 percent of voters who had heard more about the fluctuations.

Overall, Mr. Trump has lost ground with voters on the economy. Just 43 percent of voters approved of how he was managing the economy in the latest Times/Siena poll, taken April 21 to 24. A year ago, 64 percent of voters looked back fondly on how Mr. Trump handled the economy in his first term.

One inevitable complication in understanding how attention paid to stories in the news corresponds with political support is that consumers can design a media diet of information from only one side or perspective. Some outlets pass over entire stories, and the language used by different outlets is sometimes so wildly divergent that people may not even recognize two stories as being about the same topic.

But voters who said they had not heard much about recent news events had one thing in common: They were much more likely to get their news from social media.

There is some evidence that Mr. Trump’s approval ratings may be falling among voters who pay little attention to the news. It is harder to know whether that drop is more because they are unhappy with current economic conditions and blaming the new administration or because they are dissatisfied with the news that has filtered through.