World Cup viewership stayed bipartisan despite Trump’s role: CNBC survey

President Donald Trump made the World Cup one of the most visible political stages of his second term. But the tournament’s U.S. audience remained strikingly bipartisan, according to the latest CNBC All-America Economic Survey.

Forty-nine percent of registered voters said they watched at least some of the World Cup, according to the survey. That included 51% of Democrats, 47% of Republicans and 47% of independents.

“It crosses partisanship, one of the few things in the world that seems to at the moment,” said Jay Campbell, a partner at Democratic polling firm Hart Research, which conducted the survey along with Republican firm Public Opinion Strategies.

The split was equally narrow along other political lines, the survey found. Fifty-one percent of voters who backed Kamala Harris in 2024 watched, compared with 47% of Trump voters. Voters who approved or disapproved of Trump tuned in at nearly the same rates, 47% and 50%, respectively.

The World Cup’s four-point Democratic-Republican gap was smaller than the partisan divides over voters’ favorite sports. Republicans were 13 points more likely than Democrats to choose football, while Democrats held seven-point advantages in soccer generally and in basketball.

Just 8% of voters named soccer as their favorite sport, but 17% said they watched “a lot” of the World Cup and an additional 32% said they watched “some.”

Micah Roberts, a partner at Public Opinion Strategies, described the tournament as a place “where Democrats and Republicans agree.”

The survey asked about World Cup viewership and asked respondents to identify their favorite sport. The results suggest the tournament largely avoided the partisan sorting that has followed Trump into much of U.S. culture.

Since returning to office, Trump has chaired the White House task force overseeing the World Cup. FIFA President Gianni Infantino has repeatedly appeared with him, and FIFA opened offices in Trump Tower. Trump attended the World Cup draw, held at the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, where Trump’s name, which he added to the center, was recently required to be removed after a court ruling.

Infantino also gave Trump 10 tickets worth $15,000 to last year’s Club World Cup final, according to Trump’s annual financial disclosure. Trump helped present the trophy and is expected to do so again Sunday at the World Cup final at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.

FIFA later awarded Trump its inaugural Peace Prize, drawing scrutiny from European lawmakers and an ethics complaint accusing Infantino of violating FIFA’s political neutrality rules.

Trump’s involvement also extended beyond ceremonies.

After U.S. striker Folarin Balogun received a red card, which triggered an automatic one-match suspension, Trump called Infantino and asked him to review the call. FIFA placed the suspension on probation, allowing Balogun to play in the next match, against Belgium.

The U.S. lost 4-1 to Belgium and was eliminated. UEFA, European soccer’s governing body, called FIFA’s reversal “unprecedented, incomprehensible and unjustifiable.” FIFA said its disciplinary committee acted under the organization’s rules.

Still, the controversy didn’t dent viewership. Half of MAGA Republicans watched, compared with 46% of non-MAGA Republicans, according to the All-America survey.

The tournament’s international appeal also reached deep into Trump’s “America First” coalition. Among viewers, 88% said they watched matches not involving the U.S., including 82% of all Republicans and 86% of MAGA Republicans.

The sharper divides were economic and educational. Fifty-nine percent of voters earning at least $100,000 watched, compared with 31% of those earning less than $30,000. Viewership reached 65% among voters with postgraduate degrees but fell to 40% among those with a high school education or less. Those divides may reflect access to paid television, on which millions of viewers watched World Cup games.

The CNBC All-America Economic Survey was conducted July 8 through July 12 by Hart Research Associates and Public Opinion Strategies. It surveyed 1,000 registered voters nationwide and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.