The Republican tax-cut bill has grown more unpopular in the two months it has taken to usher it through Congress, and few people believe it will provide relief for middle-class families, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll has found.

The poll also found that the GOP has lost its advantage on issues it has recently dominated. Americans now express more confidence in Democrats than Republicans to handle taxes, the economy and President Donald Trump’s signature goal of changing how Washington works.

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Republicans in Congress say the tax bill will become more popular once the tax cuts begin to take effect in February. They are hoping that the legislation will shore up the party’s political fortunes by giving the GOP its first major legislative accomplishment.

In the new survey, many Americans gave Mr. Trump credit for the nation’s strong economy, with 40% saying he has made the economy better and 21% saying he has made it worse. But those feelings brought little benefit to the president’s party.

Nearly half of adults in the new survey held negative views of the GOP, higher than the 38% of a year ago and a larger share than the 27% who viewed the party favorably. By contrast, views of the Democratic Party have turned slightly more positive over the past year.


It is unusual to see a political party that controls the levers of power so challenged at a time of economic improvement, said Bill McInturff, a Republican pollster who conducted the survey with Democrat Fred Yang. He doubted the situation would change with enactment of the tax bill.

“We are watching a case where a president is getting credit for the economy improving, sitting on top of an economic boom, and not deriving political value,” said Mr. McInturff. “I don’t believe passing the bill is going to have much of an immediate effect.”

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R., Wis.,) has said that opinions of the tax bill will improve once tax cuts appear in worker paychecks. “When people see their withholding improving, when they see the jobs occurring, when they see bigger paychecks, a fairer tax system, a simpler tax code, that’s what’s going to produce the results,” he said Tuesday. The House and Senate were expected to clear the bill for Mr. Trump’s signature by Wednesday.

In an interview with the Journal, Mr. Ryan acknowledged his party faced a political challenge heading into next year’s midterm elections. “I see a historical trend cutting against us.... We’ve got the wind at our face,” he said. Mr. Ryan said he thought that changes to welfare programs and the criminal justice system would be popular to advance in the midterm year.


The new Journal/NBC poll, conducted Dec. 13-15, finds that the GOP has a lot of work to do in promoting the tax bill, because few people believe it will cut taxes for the middle class or for their own family. More than two-thirds of respondents said the law was designed mostly to help corporations and the wealthy.

Asked to assess how the law would affect them, 17% said their family would pay less in taxes under the measure, while 32% say they would pay more. Democrats were the more skeptical and Republicans less so, while the overall numbers mirror the opinion of independents.

Overall, 41% of Americans in the survey said the tax plan was a bad idea, up from 35% in October.

Fewer than one-quarter of people said the bill was a good idea.


After two months of congressional debate on the measure, Americans now have less confidence in the GOP’s handling of one of their marquee issues: People said by a 33%-to-29% margin that they believe that Democrats would do a better job than Republicans with taxes.

In another reversal, the poll found a plurality favoring Democrats as best to deal with the economy, 35% to 30%, and in changing Washington, 30% to 20%.

The general mood of the electorate is grim. Although people see the economy as improving, only 30% said the country was better off compared with when the Trump presidency began, while 45% said it was worse off. The question produced a large gender gap: 51% of women but 39% of men said the country was now worse off.

On three other fronts—Mr. Trump’s impact on the nation’s standing in the world, on national unity and on partisanship in politics—majorities said the president’s approach had made things worse.

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Just over one-quarter of people in the survey predicted that Mr. Trump would be successful as president, while 44% said he would unsuccessful—more than twice the share who said in early 2010 that Barack Obama wouldn’t be successful as president.


Asked whether they believed the Trump campaign colluded with Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign, 38% said yes, 35% said no, and 26% said they weren’t sure. Asked whether Congress should begin impeachment hearings to remove Mr. Trump from office, 54% said no, while 41% said yes.

The Journal/NBC News poll surveyed 900 adults from Dec. 13-15. The margin of error was plus or minus 3.27 percentage points.

—Richard Rubin and Kristina Peterson contributed to this article.

Write to Janet Hook at janet.hook@wsj.com