A majority of those polled said Donald Trump would not make wise decisions about war and peace. | AP Photo Poll: 29 percent of Americans say Trump has a mandate to carry out agenda

Less than 30 percent of Americans say Donald Trump has a mandate to carry out as president the agenda he proposed on the campaign trail, according to a Washington Post/Schar School poll released Wednesday.

Just 29 percent said Trump has a mandate to accomplish all that he set out during his White House bid, while 59 percent said he should compromise with Democrats, who are the minority party in both houses of Congress, on issues where they strongly disagree. Fifty-six percent of respondents who said they voted for Trump said he should push his agenda through Congress without the help of Democrats. More than 60 percent of those polled said they expect to see major changes in Washington once Trump takes office.


In comparison, 50 percent of Americans said President Barack Obama had a mandate when he was first elected to the White House in 2008, and 41 percent said the same of President George W. Bush when he was elected in 2000, the pollsters said. The latter campaign rivals 2016’s as the most divisive in modern U.S. history.

A majority of those polled said Trump would not make wise decisions about war and peace, with 51 percent saying they were either “not so confident” or “not at all confident” in the Manhattan billionaire on that question, while 47 percent said they were either very or somewhat confident. Fifty-two percent expressed confidence that Trump will serve effectively as president, while 45 percent said they were not confident that he will.

On the question of whether Trump should fulfill his campaign promise to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Hillary Clinton for wrongdoing, Trump’s supporters diverge from the country overall. Sixty-nine percent of those who backed the president-elect said he should follow through on the pledge, while 57 percent of respondents overall said he should not.

Seventy-three percent of respondents said the campaign made them angry, while 55 percent said news coverage of it made them feel stressed out.

The poll put Obama’s approval rating at 56 percent, roughly the same level at which it has been since last June. Just 28 percent of respondents said they strongly disapprove of his job performance, the lowest that number has been in more than five years. Despite that, almost 90 percent of Trump supporters polled said they were dissatisfied with the U.S. in recent years, and roughly 80 percent said “large-scale changes” are necessary for the government.

The Washington Post-Schar School poll was conducted from Nov. 11-14, reaching 1,002 adults across the U.S. on landlines and cellphones. The margin of error for the full sample size was plus or minus 4 percentage points.

