Who better represents America? More Americans say Bad Bunny than Trump.

Shortly after the Puerto Rican rapper and singer Bad Bunny finished performing in Spanish at Super Bowl LX last Sunday in Santa Clara, Calif., President Trump took to Truth Social to deliver his verdict.

“The Super Bowl Halftime Show is absolutely terrible, one of the worst, EVER!” Trump wrote. “It makes no sense, is an affront to the Greatness of America, and doesn’t represent our standards of Success, Creativity, or Excellence. Nobody understands a word this guy is saying.”

But the American people seem to disagree.

When asked who “better represents America,” more of them say Bad Bunny (42%) than say Trump himself (39%), according to a new Yahoo/YouGov poll conducted immediately after the big game, from Feb. 9 to 12.

Among independents — who tend to decide elections — there is an even wider gap between those who say Bad Bunny is a better representative of America (46%) and those who say Trump (27%).

In 2025, Bad Bunny (born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio) drew the ire of the president and his supporters for pointedly refusing to play any U.S. dates on his Debí Tirar Más Fotos world tour out of concern that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) would target his fans. Bad Bunny also released a song (“Nuevayol”) that featured a Trump imitator saying, “This country is nothing without the immigrants. This country is nothing without Mexicans, Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, Colombians, Venezuelans, Cubans.”

When it was announced last September that Bad Bunny would headline this year’s Super Bowl halftime show, Trump called the decision “absolutely ridiculous.”

“I don’t know who he is,” the president said at the time, despite the fact that Bad Bunny has won six Grammys and topped Spotify’s annual ranking of the world’s most-streamed artists a record four times (2020, 2021, 2022 and 2025). “I don’t know why they’re doing it — it’s, like, crazy.”

Trump later said that “all it does is sow hatred” to have Bad Bunny headline the halftime show.

As a result, the response to Bad Bunny’s performance has been unusually political. The influencer and fighter Jake Paul, who lives in Puerto Rico himself, called Bad Bunny “a fake American citizen… who publicly hates America” as he urged his X followers to “turn off this halftime” show. (Puerto Rico is an unincorporated U.S. territory and Puerto Ricans have been U.S. citizens since 1917.)

“To get up there and perform the whole show in Spanish is a middle finger to the rest of America!” fumed former Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly. “The half-time show, and everything around it, needs to stay quintessentially American. Not Spanish, not Muslim, not anything other than good old-fashioned American apple pie.”

“There’s nothing American about any of this,” Trump confidante Laura Loomer added on social media.

The new Yahoo/YouGov survey underscores just how polarized the reaction has been. A full 78% of Democrats now see Bad Bunny favorably; just 7% see him unfavorably. Among Republicans, those numbers are nearly reversed: 12% favorable to 70% unfavorable.

Likewise, 77% of Democrats approve of the choice of Bad Bunny as this year’s Super Bowl halftime performer. A mere 13% of Republicans agree.

Perhaps most strikingly, the poll suggests that Republicans simply didn’t bother to watch Bad Bunny perform. While a majority of them (51%) say they tuned in to this year’s Super Bowl, just 29% say they stuck around for the halftime show. (The conservative group Turning Point USA aired an alternative halftime show headlined by Kid Rock.) Among Democrats, those numbers are 56% and 66%, respectively — suggesting that many came only for Bad Bunny and switched off as soon as the game resumed.

All in all, 47% of Americans say they saw Bad Bunny perform on Sunday. But far more of them were Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (61%) than Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (23%).

Of the Americans who did watch the halftime show  — again, a left-leaning audience — about two-thirds say they liked Bad Bunny’s performance (65%) and approved of him “performing entirely in Spanish” (66%).

Ultimately, where does that leave Bad Bunny himself? In better shape than Trump, at least. Just 39% of Americans currently have a favorable view of the president; 58% have an unfavorable view. That is Trump’s most negative rating since returning to office last January.

In contrast, more Americans see Bad Bunny favorably (43%) than unfavorably (36%).

An even greater number approve of how Bad Bunny ended his halftime show, whether they watched it or not. First, respondents were told that Bad Bunny’s performance concluded with him “saying ‘God Bless America’ and naming the countries in North, Central and South America in front of a billboard that read, ‘The Only Thing More Powerful than Hate Is Love.’” Then they were asked whether they approve or disapprove of “Bad Bunny’s message.”

A full 60% of Americans say they approve. Just 16% say they disapprove.

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The Yahoo survey was conducted by YouGov using a nationally representative sample of 1,704 U.S. adults interviewed online from Feb. 9 to 12, 2026. The sample was weighted according to gender, age, race, education, 2024 election turnout and presidential vote, party identification and current voter registration status. Demographic weighting targets come from the 2019 American Community Survey. Party identification is weighted to the estimated distribution at the time of the election (31% Democratic, 32% Republican). Respondents were selected from YouGov’s opt-in panel to be representative of all U.S. adults. The margin of error is approximately 3%.