More than 70% of Portland-area adults say they have been directly affected by Trump administration policies or executive orders – and three-fourths of those say the impact has been negative, according to a new poll commissioned by The Oregonian/OregonLive.
An increase in the cost of living topped the list of negative impacts poll respondents cited. Other top complaints included fear-inducing immigration enforcement, tariffs and hits to the job market.
A narrower slice of Portland-area residents, nearly 1 in 5, said President Donald Trump’s policies have directly affected them for the better. Most are Republicans who said he lowered their taxes or cracked down on illegal immigration or both.
People who live in the Democrat-dominated city of Portland were particularly likely to say the president’s actions have harmed them personally, with three-fourths saying they’ve experienced a direct impact – and more than 90% of those saying that’s been negative.
Rae Blackbird, a Portland native who graduated from University of California, Berkeley last May with a degree in public policy, long dreamed of working on the environment, and a close college friend graduated with a job already lined up at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
But after returning to Portland and applying for “basically everything I could find,” primarily in the green energy sector, Blackbird watched his friend’s job at the EPA evaporate due to DOGE cuts – then found himself shut out of green jobs and working instead as a legal assistant at a public defense firm.
Trump policies have forced Blackbird to “table quite a bit of my environmental ambitions,” he said. “The world that we studied to graduate into is not that world that we entered the workforce in. …There’s that personal impact on people’s lives and also the large societal loss that people were energized and excited and ready to work to make a difference, but there’s just no opportunities.”
The poll, which covered a wide range of topics, was conducted by Portland-based DHM Research from April 23 to April 30. It reached 600 registered voters, and the results were weighted to accurately reflect the populations of Multnomah, Washington and Clackamas counties. Its overall margin of error is plus or minus 4 percentage points for the entire metro area, with larger error bands for subpopulations, such as the city of Portland or unaffiliated voters.
The ways in which residents perceive themselves to have been impacted by the Trump administration were captured via one of just two open-ended questions in the newsroom’s poll. Responses were often quite detailed.
“As a member of the LGBTQ+ community, I worry that my rights are being eroded,” respondent Greg Nika of Portland told a poll taker. “I’m concerned about attacks on voting by mail. I’m concerned about more restrictive vaccine access. I’m concerned about rolling back investment in clean energy. I’m concerned about funding being revoked, including for the Interstate Bridge.”
“ICE took away a friend of ours and also our landscaper; tariffs have impacted my business,” another respondent, who did not grant permission to use his name, wrote.
“I worked in public health research and grant administration, and the illegal funding cuts and policy actions have destroyed the future of that field,” wrote another critic of Trump’s actions. “I now work in another field entirely after 15-plus years in public health.
Some fans of Trump policies were just as specific.
“My paychecks are better,” said poll respondent Sean Simpson, who lives in Washington County. Simpson cited “tax credits, secure border and better peace of mind” as other positives he’s experienced due to Trump policies.
Another poll respondent, who did not grant permission to use their name, told a poll taker, “Our investments are up, we did better on our taxes than previously and I’ll be able to afford a weight loss medication in July thanks to the Bridge program,” referencing the Trump administration-initiated GLP-1 Bridge Program that will allow some Medicare Part D patients to get weight loss medications for just $50 a month.
Latinos most likely to cite harms, high income people to cite tax breaks
No demographic group skewed more negative on Trump’s effects on them than Portland-area Latinos. Ten percent of Latino voters said Trump’s orders and policies have had a positive impact on them, while 65% reported negative effects.
High-income Oregonians, in households earning more than $100,000 and more than $150,000, were among those most likely to report that Trump’s policies had helped them, likely reflecting the tax breaks he championed for many high-income individuals and most seniors.
Unsurprisingly, opinion splits by party were stark. Across the metro area, 75% of registered Democrats said Trump’s policies and orders had personally harmed them, whereas only 11% of Republicans said so. On the flip side, 48% of Republicans said Trump had directly helped them versus only 8% of Democrats.
Republicans were also far more likely than Democrats or unaffiliated voters to say they have not been directly affected by a Trump order or policy, at 35%.
More than half of poll respondents who said Trump had a positive personal impact on them cited one of two factors: taxes and immigration. Overall, poll respondents who cited a Trump administration impact on their taxes were overwhelmingly positive about that.
Among the much larger group of Portland-area adults who said Trump had personally affected them in a negative way, views of how were more dispersed: About 40% cited an increase in the cost of living, but notable numbers also cited employment struggles (17%), immigration enforcement (16%), tariffs (16%) and cutbacks to green jobs, renewable energy and electric car rebates.
The position that Trump’s primary personal impact on poll respondents was on the cost of living held relatively constant across the three metro counties but was particularly pronounced in Portland City Council District 1, east of Interstate 205. That area has the highest poverty rate of the city’s four council districts.
A one-two punch
For Aubrey Williams, a professional artist who lives in that district, March brought a particularly painful economic one-two punch, she said. Trump’s launch of the war in Iran quickly drove up gas prices and some related costs, then Williams lost her dream job as a concept artist for video games – and with it, her healthcare insurance. She blames the elimination of her job on what she says has been the Trump administration’s weak regulation of AI.
She’s struggling to afford food as well as medications her life depends on while receiving unemployment benefits. She’s afraid to seek an adjustment to her income-dependent student loan payments because Trump has changed the rules on student loans so often, she said.
“It’s so intersectional, all of the reasons why everything is going wrong and having it all lead back to him,” Williams said.
For Washington County residents, Trump’s orders and policies on immigration raids and ICE crackdowns figured prominently — and largely but not entirely negatively — in people’s lives. Twenty-three percent of the county’s adults reported immigration enforcement and ICE as a direct effect on their lives.
Tax cut makes homeownership more affordable
Across the metro area, the second-most-commonly cited impact was on reducing taxes. But that impact barely registered for Multnomah County adults, with only 8% citing it as a primary impact, whereas Washington and Clackamas residents cited taxes a little more than twice that often. Republicans across the three-county metro area were highly likely to say Trump impacted their tax burden, with 48% of them naming that as the main effect on them personally. Just 4% of Democrats cited an impact on their taxes.
For Kristopher Hess, who lives in the Aloha area and works 12-hour swing shifts at a factory that operates 24-7, the end of taxes on overtime has had a big effect. He and his co-workers are automatically scheduled to work eight hours of overtime every other week – with the extra pay bump now tax-free.
His and his wife’s tax refund was noticeably larger this year than in the past, and his paychecks are bigger this year due to less tax withholding, he said. That’s a particularly welcome development since the couple, in their early 30s, just managed to buy their first home. “It’s been very helpful,” said Hess, who is a registered Republican but said he doesn’t consider himself a party die-hard.
For working-age adults, Trump’s impact on employment and the job market was top of mind for many, ranging from 13% to 19% across different age ranges, with those ages 30 to 44 most likely to cite it as a direct impact. And only one of the 600 people who answered the poll said Trump’s impact on the job market helped rather than harmed them.
But adults aged 65 and up showed almost no personal impact from Trump’s impact on employment, with just 3% listing it.
On the flip side, senior citizens were the only age group in which a significant slice, 14%, said Trump had personally affected them by changing the political climate. They differed, however, on whether that was a positive or a negative, with roughly half going each way.
A hit to mental health
A significant chunk of city of Portland residents, 13%, said Trump policies and orders personally impacted their emotional well-being. Very few residents outside Portland, just 4%, mentioned that as a personal impact.
Rachel Silvis of Portland said Trump’s actions have left her feeling hopeless much of the time.
“I’m scared for the future and I’m scared for right now,” she said. “I just don’t like waking up every single day and there’s something on the news that doesn’t make any sense,” including the war in Iran, lessening protections on national parks and empowering ICE agents to tear families apart, she said.
Silvis recently completed training to work as an esthetician. But she said she, like 90% of the people she trained with, hasn’t been able to find a job in the field, a problem she attributes to slumping employment and economic optimism under Trump. So she’s looking for other work.
“The economy is crashing and it’s hard for people to get jobs,” Silvis said. “And then it’s like, is the government being honest with us? Nobody knows. … It’s destabilizing to your feeling that you can see a better future. Are we going to have fresh water and clean air in 10 years with all this stuff going on? It’s very scary. … It’s something that I try not to think about too often because it genuinely freaks me out.”
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