Editor's note: This article was originally published in The Surveyor, YouGov America's email newsletter. It has been revised for publication here. Subscribe to The Surveyor for regular updates on YouGov's polling.

This week, at a White House event about physical fitness, Donald Trump asked a boy, "You think you could take me in a fight?"

We at YouGov thought that was a striking question, and promptly asked 2,609 Americans whether they thought an eight-year-old boy, a typical American, and themselves could win a physical fight with Trump.

66% of U.S. adults say an average American would beat Trump, while 10% say Trump would win.

On all three questions, Democrats are far less likely than Republicans to say Trump would win. For example, almost all Democrats say they could win a fight with Trump (75%, while only 5% say Trump would win), but Republicans are slightly more likely to say they'd lose than win (33% vs. 39%).

Democrats are more likely to say an eight-year-old boy could beat Trump than Republicans are to think they could beat Trump (54% vs. 33%).

YouGov polling has found men are more likely than women to say they would win contests, such as fights with wild animals, tennis points against Serena Williams, and battles with aviation emergencies. That's true for a hypothetical fight with Trump, too: 64% of men say they could beat Trump, compared to 47% of women.

But views about fighting Trump vary more with party identification than with gender. 82% of Democratic men and 71% of Democratic women say they could beat Trump — an 11-percentage-point gap. But only 46% of Republican men say they could beat Trump, 36 points lower than the share of Democratic men who say they could win. Republican women are 52 points less likely than Democratic women to say they could win a physical fight with Trump, and only 27 points less likely than Republican men to say so.

In 2024, Americans thought more highly of Trump's win probability for a hypothetical arm wrestling contest with Joe Biden.

See the full results of this poll

Methodology: The Daily Questions survey was conducted online on May 5 - 6, 2026, among 2,609 U.S. adults. The samples were weighted according to gender, age, race, education, U.S. Census region, and political party. The margin of error is approximately 2.5%.

Image: Getty (Win McNamee / Staff)

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