57% of Britons are unhappy about Trump’s victory, with 55% saying it will be bad for the UK
After months of campaigning, Donald Trump has won the 2024 US presidential election, defeating Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and becoming only the second president in US history to serve non-consecutive terms.
But while it might be the decision of American voters, it is far from what the British public wanted – last week, YouGov found that only one in six Britons (16%) wanted a Trump victory, compared to six in ten (61%) who wanted Harris to become America’s first woman president.
Because of this, it is unsurprising that reaction in the UK to Trump’s victory has largely been negative. Just 20% of Britons say they feel happy about the result, compared to 57% who say they are unhappy, including 45% who are ‘very unhappy’.
Labour and Lib Dem voters are overwhelmingly unhappy with the result (75-79%), with only 10-11% reacting happily to the news. Conservative voters are more split, but even then, the 51% of Tories unhappy with the result is roughly double the 26% who are happy at the prospect of a second Trump presidency.
Reform UK voters are the sole exception to the negative reaction, with 52% joining Nigel Farage in sharing their pleasure at the result, with only 22% unhappy.
As with the gender gap identified by American exit polls, with women ten percentage points less likely to have voted for Trump, British women are more likely to be unhappy with the result (65%) than men (49%).
Do Britons think Trump will be good for Britain?
Aside from political differences, a likely reason for this displeasure at the result is a widespread feeling that Trump will not be good for Britain. More than half of Britons (55%) believe that his second presidency will be bad for the UK, with 31% of the public going as far as saying it will be 'very bad'.
This stands against just 18% who expect having Trump in the White House again will be good for Britain and 17% who think it will not impact the UK in either a particularly positive or negative way.
Once again, there are clear political divides in expectation. While 72% of Labour voters expect Trump's second term to be bad for the UK, only 22% of Reform UK voters share the pessimism, with 45% instead believing a return to Republican rule in America will be a positive for Britain.
Do Britons think Trump will impact them?
But despite the negativity towards the result and expectation he will be bad for the UK, Britons tend to think that Trump’s election will have limited impact on them personally, with 42% of the public saying they expect Trump as president will have not very much impact on their life, while a further 10% believe it will have no impact on them at all.
By contrast, 26% of the public feel they will feel a fair amount of impact from America’s decision and 6% expect the result to have a lot of impact on their life.
Younger Britons are most likely to think that Trump's election will impact their life, with 43% of 18-24 year olds believing his return to Washington D.C. will have at least a fair amount of impact on them, compared to only 22% of over-65s.
See the full results here, here and here
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Photo: Getty
