How Americans view potential members of Trump’s administration

A few days after Donald Trump named Jim Mattis as his nominee for defense secretary in December 2016, the polling firm YouGov asked Americans to offer an opinion on the potential Cabinet secretary.

Unsurprisingly, given Mattis’s low public profile, most people had no opinion at all. Democrats were slightly more down on Mattis than Americans overall, no doubt because those who knew him knew him as a Trump appointee. But even so, only a fifth of Democrats said they viewed Mattis very unfavorably.