By Ariel Edwards-Levy, Amy O’Kruk, and Kathryn Squyres CNN
(CNN) — Most Americans don’t have faith that their political leaders care what they have to say.
But if they had the chance to tell Washington something, a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS finds, they’d say plenty, much of it about the economy.
That was the most common response when Americans were asked to share in their own words what they’d tell President Donald Trump to make life in the US better.
Among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, 40% mentioned economic or cost-of-living concerns.
“My message to him right now would be, ‘Please take care of the economy because it’s awful,’” said Betty Glazebrook, a 78-year-old Trump voter from Massachusetts who spoke to CNN after taking the survey. “You know, being out of work now, I wonder down the road, you know, how will I survive? And I just don’t know what’s gonna happen.”
Nearly 4 in 10 Americans say that neither the president nor Democratic leadership is listening to people like them. Just 34% of US adults say that Trump cares even somewhat what they have to say and just 36% say that the leadership of the Democratic Party does.
Glazebrook said she feels like Trump cares more about himself than people like her, but she’s also unconvinced that Democrats have her best interests in mind. “I’m starting to feel like nobody does, honestly,” she said.
While Trump has often downplayed affordability as a concern, the issue remains top of mind for many voters and likely to dominate next year’s midterms. Mentions of the economy dwarf other political issues in the survey. Just 5% of Americans said their advice to Trump would touch on immigration with fewer still mentioning foreign policy.
Not all messages have to do with policy. Many simply want a chance to make their feelings about Trump known; 16% say they’d call on him to resign or leave office, while 8% say they’d pay him a compliment. Around 15% say Trump could most help Americans by changing something about his personal conduct, with 6% wanting him to modulate his tone or to be more respectful, thoughtful or presidential. A few say they would refuse to speak with him at all.
Many Americans also have advice for Democrats on how they should deal with Trump. Ten percent say Democratic leaders could most help by standing their ground or fighting harder against Trump or the GOP, while another 10% say they should instead focus more on compromising or working across the aisle.
The sentiment among the Democratic base is more clear-cut: 19% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents say they’d tell their party’s leadership to take more of a stand compared with just 2% who say they’d advocate for greater compromise.
“Stop being gentle and palatable to the opposing side,” one Democratic-leaning independent from New Jersey in their 20s wrote in response to the survey. “They take extreme and aggressive measures to force change backwards, and when laws get broken, even constitutional ones, many remain silent. We should have an equal reaction to balance out the scales of power.”
That desire for increased forcefulness from their party doesn’t map as neatly onto a preferred set of political views. Few Democratic-aligned adults said that they’d share a message about the party’s ideological direction, and those who did were about equally as likely to suggest that the party should move to the left as they were to say it should become more moderate.
Many Americans, meanwhile, just want to feel like they’re being heard: 8% say they’d tell Democratic leaders to help people, listen to people, or put the people over partisan politics; 5% say they’d deliver a similar message to Trump.
“Take a step outside and look in your own neighborhood, your own backyard and see that who’s really struggling and who’s actually needing the help,” said Kayley Jensen, a 30-year-old single mother from the Bay Area who responded to the survey. “You’re throwing all this money on things that don’t matter when you could be building shelters.’”
The CNN poll was conducted by SSRS online and by phone from December 4 to 7 among a random national sample of 1,032 adults drawn from a probability-based panel. Results for the full sample have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
CNN’s Jennifer Agiesta and Edward Wu contributed to this report.
Most Americans don’t think Trump or Democratic leaders are listening. Here’s what they wish they could tell Washington News Channel 3-12.
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