Aided by a strong economy and perceptions that he has dealt with it effectively, President Trump’s approval rating has risen to the highest point of his presidency, though a slight majority of Americans continue to say they disapprove of his performance in office, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll.

The survey highlights the degree to which Trump has a narrow but real path to reelection. His approval rating on most issues is net negative, and more than 6 in 10 Americans say he has acted in ways that are unpresidential since he was sworn into office. Still, roughly one-fifth of those who say he is not presidential say they approve of the job he is doing, and he runs even against four possible Democratic nominees in hypothetical ­general-election matchups. He trails decisively only to former vice president Joe Biden.

[Read full Post-ABC poll results ]

Trump’s approval rating among voting-age Americans stands at 44 percent, edging up from 39 percent in April, with 53 percent saying they disapprove of him. Among registered voters, 47 percent say they approve of Trump while 50 percent disapprove. In April, 42 percent of registered voters said they approved while 54 percent said they disapproved.

More than a year before the general election and long before the Democrats will select their nominee, the 2020 contest is playing out against the backdrop of an electorate deeply divided over the president, with a small percentage of registered voters up for grabs. Both Democrats and the president enjoy solid bases of support, but more Americans say it is extremely important that Trump not win reelection than those who say it is extremely important that he is reelected.

The survey highlights significant differences between women and men in their candidate preference, a continuation of a trend that has been evident throughout Trump’s presidency. Those gender differences shaped the outcome of the 2018 midterm elections, when Democrats captured the House with strong support among women. In the new survey, men clearly favor Trump against four of five potential Democratic challengers (they are evenly divided over a Biden-Trump contest) while women back all five by strong margins.

The economy is the lone issue in the survey where Trump enjoys positive numbers, with 51 percent saying they approve of the way he has dealt with issues. A smaller 42 percent disapprove of his handling of it, down slightly from 46 percent last October. Asked how much credit Trump deserves for the state of the economy, 47 percent say a “great deal” or a “good amount,” while 48 percent say he deserves “only some” or “hardly any.”

When asked the same question in a January 2018 survey, a smaller 38 percent of Americans gave him credit for the economy while 56 percent said he deserved little or none. In that 2018 poll, 19 percent said he deserved a great deal of credit for the economy; today that number is 30 percent.

On the eight other issues measured, Trump gets negative ratings, ranging from a net negative of seven points on taxes to a net negative of 33 points on climate change. More than half of all Americans disapprove of his handling of immigration, health care, abortion, gun violence and “issues of special concern to women.”

The survey was conducted while Trump was attending a meeting of world leaders in Japan, where trade tensions with China were eased. He later met with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un — taking steps into that nation and coming to an agreement to restart nuclear negotiations. But by 55 percent to 40 percent, Americans disapprove of his handling of foreign policy.

The survey matched Trump against five possible Democratic nominees: Biden, Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg.

Among registered voters, only Biden emerges with a clear advantage, leading Trump by 53 percent to 43 percent. Trump runs very close against Harris (46 percent Trump, 48 percent Harris) and Sanders (48 percent Trump, 49 percent Sanders), and he runs even against Warren (both at 48 percent) and Buttigieg (both at 47 percent).

Among the broader pool of voting-age adults, all five Democrats hold at least a slight advantage over Trump.

Trump and Republicans are trying to attach the label of “socialist” to all the Democrats. Asked a generic question about a matchup between Trump and a candidate regarded as a socialist, the president holds a slight edge of 49 percent to 43 percent among registered voters.

Across the five matchups against named possible Democratic nominees, 41 percent of registered voters always choose the Democrat, and 40 percent always choose the president. Meanwhile, 54 percent of voters either support Trump against at least one named Democrat or say they would consider backing him.

Trump’s hardcore base includes 21 percent of registered voters who support him against any of the five possible Democratic challengers tested and who say it is “extremely important” that he be reelected. That rises to 31 percent when those who say it is “very important” that he win a second term are added to those solid Trump supporters.

Arrayed against Trump are 36 percent of registered voters who never support Trump in the matchups and say it is “extremely important” that the president not win a second term. That rises to 43 percent when those who say it is “very important” that Trump not be reelected are added to those consistent anti-Trump voters.

Biden’s lead over Trump is built in part on stronger support among independent voters and among self-identified moderates. He enjoys a seven-point edge among independents, while the other Democrats are even or trailing Trump with those voters. Among moderates, Biden has a 28-point advantage over the president, significantly more than any of the other Democrats tested.

Gender and education are clear fault lines in the electorate as voters think about 2020 choices. Trump receives between 38 percent and 42 percent support from women when matched against the five potential Democratic challengers. Even tested against a hypothetical candidate regarded as a socialist, he gets only 42 percent of support from women. Among men, Trump’s support ranges from 49 percent against Biden, to 54 percent against the other Democrats, and to 57 percent against a hypothetical socialist.

Trump wins majority support among white voters, but he does far better with those who do not have college degrees than those who do, a pattern that emerged strongly in the 2016 election and continues to define the political divisions today. Nonwhite voters favor all Democrats by a wide margin over Trump; 76 percent of all nonwhite voters say they would support Biden if the election were held today, as would 85 percent of African American voters.

There is also a strong urban-rural split, with potential Democratic challengers enjoying big margins among urban voters and Trump holding sizable margins among those who live in rural and small-town areas.

As what happened in 2016, the geographic battle in 2020 will center on the suburbs: In the head-to-head comparisons, Biden leads slightly among suburban voters. Trump is competitive with the other Democrats tested in suburban areas.

Overall, the top issues for Americans as the 2020 election nears are the economy, health care and immigration. Foreign policy, gun violence, taxes, issues of special concern to women and abortion follow behind. Climate change trails the others — but still over half say it’s at least “very important.”

Republicans and Democrats diverge on which issues they would list as one of the single most important in influencing their vote. For example, 31 percent of Democrats cite health care as one of the single most important issues, compared with 9 percent of Republicans. Climate change is another example, with 27 percent of Democrats and 6 percent of Republicans calling it one of the single most important issues for 2020. On the economy, there is more agreement about its significance.

In the area of health care, the cost of coverage and treatment ranks as a serious concern, with 71 percent of Americans saying they are worried about this, including 45 percent who say they are very worried.

A slight majority (52 percent) of Americans say they would favor a universal health-care system run by the government and funded by taxes over the current system. But when asked whether they would prefer such a system if it meant an end to private insurance, support falls to 43 percent.

As Congress prepares for testimony by former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III about his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and related matters, the survey shows a clear majority of Americans continue to oppose impeachment proceedings.

The new poll finds 59 percent of Americans saying the House should not begin such proceedings, including 46 percent who strongly oppose such a move. That is a slight increase since April. The percentage favoring impeachment proceedings, 37 percent, is the same as it was in April and 12 points lower than in August 2018.

A 61 percent majority of Democrats support impeaching Trump, including 49 percent who support doing so “strongly,” reflecting the cross pressures hitting both the presidential candidates and members of Congress.

This Washington Post-ABC News poll was conducted by telephone from June 28 through July 1 among a random national sample of 1,008 adults, with 65 percent reached on cellphones and 35 percent on landlines. Results from the full sample have a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points; the error margin is four points among the sample of 875 registered voters.

Scott Clement contributed to this report.

President Trump said his administration will move forward “fairly soon” with a plan to arrest thousands of migrant families in surprise roundups across major U.S. cities, with the two-week deadline he imposed on Democrats expiring Saturday.

Trump tipped off the mass arrests in a June 17 tweet, vowing “millions” of deportations, but called them off five days later. The president tweeted that he delayed the raids for two weeks at Democrats’ request, “to see if the Democrats and Republicans can get together and work out a solution to the Asylum and Loophole problems at the Southern Border.”

“If not,” he wrote, “Deportations start!”

Trump’s threats have left immigrants living in the United States illegally in a fog of dread, putting neighborhoods on edge and making residents fear venturing outside.

Eva, who works at a plant nursery in Homestead, Fla., said she has stopped going to the park and makes trips to the grocery store every few weeks.

“I don’t know when I leave in the morning if I’ll come home in the night,” said Eva, who arrived illegally 19 years ago from Mexico and whose teen daughter is a U.S. citizen.

“They could come and get me at any time,” she said. She spoke on the condition that her last name not be used.

In addition to many lawmakers being out of town and the deadline for congressional action expiring over the weekend, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is in transition: Many supervisors and agents have been on vacation for the July 4 holiday, and the current acting head, Mark Morgan, is leaving to start a new job Monday as the acting chief of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Carol Danko, a spokeswoman for ICE, declined to discuss the agency’s plans.

“ICE does not comment on sensitive law enforcement operations,” she said.

The president did exactly that, though, in his June 17 tweet advertising mass arrests he said would start the following week. Operational details of the plan began leaking out and circulating on Capitol Hill soon after.

White House aides and Homeland Security officials were frustrated that the president put ICE’s plans on Twitter, prompting concerns that the operation’s blown cover diminished its chances for success and jeopardized the safety of federal agents. Administration officials said it was the uproar that followed — not a potential deal with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) — that led to the operation’s delay.

[At border, grim realities of crisis collide with 2020 campaign politics]

Justice Department and Homeland Security officials began working on the “family operation” in late 2018 to deport some of the Central American parents and children who have been arriving in record numbers during the past year, viewing the arrests as a deterrent to future migration.

The Justice Department fast-tracked the cases of thousands of families, many of whom claimed fear of harm if sent back. Homeland Security officials say 90 percent of those ordered deported did not show up for their court hearings.

ICE developed a target list this spring with thousands of names in at least 10 cities, including Houston, Los Angeles, New York and other major immigrant destinations. Senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller and other White House officials urged the arrests and deportations to be carried out in a highly visible fashion for the sake of maximum publicity.

The “family op” stalled, though, as Homeland Security officials worried it would trigger a wave of outrage similar to the fury over last year’s “zero tolerance” family separations.

ICE acting director Ronald Vitiello and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen were ousted in April when they challenged the plan, doubting its preparation and timing. Kevin McAleenan, who is acting secretary of Homeland Security, also hesitated last month, warning the roundups would potentially incur more separations, inflaming Democrats and jeopardizing a supplemental funding bill to alleviate the crisis at the Mexico border.

Lawmakers passed the $4.6 billion border bill in the past week in a rare bipartisan vote that exposed fissures between moderate and left-wing Democrats over immigration policy.

With the money approved, White House and DHS officials say the operation will go forward in the coming weeks.

Matthew Albence, who takes over Sunday as ICE’s acting chief for the second time this year, is a leading proponent of the family operation, viewing it as crucial to upholding U.S. law and his agency’s role as the enforcer of judicial orders.

Trump’s June 22 tweet crediting Pelosi with the delay was a “face-saving” move, said one senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to contradict the president’s public statement.

Since then, acting Trump chief of staff Mick Mulvaney’s office has been working with Homeland Security officials to figure out if the family operation can proceed in a more targeted way, instead of the “shock and awe” approach favored by Miller and others.

White House officials said they have also been concerned the administration lacks a fully cooked communications strategy to explain the goals of the mass arrests and minimize the potential fallout from images of families being taken into custody.

The plan is to carry out the arrests in a more piecemeal fashion, without announcing dates or times in advance, the senior official said, cautioning there is “always a chance POTUS blurts them out.”

The president has been briefed on the broad strokes of the plan, but not the precise details, the official said.

ICE officials expect they may be able to detain only 10 to 20 percent of their targets in each city, so they are trying to calibrate the president’s expectations, particularly after he pledged to sweep up millions of deportation-eligible foreigners.

Officials at ICE concede that few of the families on their list are likely to be encountered at the addresses provided to the courts. The agency is expecting to find some of those individuals and make “collateral” arrests of others they encounter who lack legal status or have outstanding deportation orders.

[Despite delay, immigrant communities mobilize for mass roundups]

In the meantime, other Homeland Security officials are telling the public that the family arrest plan is back on track.

Ken Cuccinelli II, acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, told Fox Business Network on Friday that ICE’s mission is “going to go forward.”

“The president’s determined about it. I’m sure Matt Albence is ready and raring to go,” said Cuccinelli, who does not oversee immigration enforcement. “And he’s preparing his agency to recommence doing what they view as their job. And I think Americans should expect that.”

Cuccinelli said he did not know the timeline for the raids and said officials “will not preannounce” them. He said the publicity over last month’s planned raids — which he called a “media mess” — had complicated the government’s plans.

Large-scale federal law enforcement operations are not publicized ahead of time, to protect the safety of officers and increase the chances that the targets can be caught unaware.

Cuccinelli also criticized House Democrats, saying they impaired the raids and failed to close asylum “loopholes” that officials say are fueling the border surge. The Trump administration is urging Democrats to pass laws that would grant greater flexibility to detain and deport unaccompanied minors and families who claim asylum. Most are quickly released pending a court hearing because of federal laws and court rulings that limit how long the government can detain children.

The constant churn of threats and rumored raids has left those facing potential deportation on edge.

Rosa Gutierrez Lopez, a mother of three, took refuge in the Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church in Bethesda, Md., seven months ago after immigration officials ordered her to go back to El Salvador. There, friends visit her, ministers teach her to meditate and she can join conference calls with others seeking protection in different cities.

They encourage one another, debate the latest declarations from Trump and update each other on new, strange letters from ICE to their old home addresses.

“We are all just waiting for an opportunity, for the laws to change and for someone to have a heart,” Gutierrez Lopez said. “There is nothing good waiting for us in our countries.”

Across the United States, volunteers are setting up hotlines so immigrants can report raids, and they are organizing volunteers to fan out to observe arrests and help afterward. Advocates are promoting videos in multiple languages — including Spanish, Urdu and Russian — that immigrants can watch at home to prepare for the moment an immigration agent knocks on their door. Advocates are teaching immigrants their legal rights in hair salons, supermarkets and church halls. Some are finding places for immigrants to hide.

The Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, a Texas-based nonprofit agency that aids immigrants, launched a letter-writing campaign to senators and representatives urging them to pressure ICE to stop the raids, calling them “domestic terrorism.” More than 18,300 people have sent the letters since June 21, the day before Trump canceled the first raids, the nonprofit said.

Immigrant families are stashing away money, seeking out church pastors for advice or sanctuary and having “the talk” with their children about the possibility that one day an immigration agent could knock on their door.

“They’re definitely scared,” said Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, which is teaching immigrants their legal rights in private sessions. “Even if the numbers are small, the purpose of the raids and the show of force is to scare a larger population. The threat is purposely meant to affect and destabilize a whole group of people. It’s that psychological attack. Maybe they’ll come for me. Maybe they won’t. Maybe it’ll be my neighbor. It’s very mentally draining.”

Lori Rozsa in Homestead, Fla., and Seung Min Kim in Washington contributed to this report.

DES MOINES — When Sen. Kamala D. Harris arrived in Iowa for the first time since her attention-grabbing debate performance, she did so with a revamped stump speech and almost double her previous forces in Iowa and New Hampshire, all part of a retooled approach her campaign hopes will ensure her breakout moment fosters lasting momentum.

Harris’s campaign team says many of these changes were planned far earlier. But they are coming at a pivotal moment — just after the first Democratic debate and as the candidates are separating into more distinct tiers. Harris’s push to sharpen her message and expand her operation is shifting the overall dynamic of the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination.

In returning to Iowa this week, Harris abandoned a stump speech that centered on the vague notion of “speaking truth” and offered little clear reason for her candidacy. Instead, she is promoting the idea of a changing country — “our America” — in contrast with what she characterizes as President Trump’s effort to take the nation back into the past.

She has also begun embracing her controversial history as a prosecutor instead of shying away from it, telling voters that her record of taking on predators (she includes in that “big banks, big pharmaceutical companies, transnational gangs, and more”) equips her to prosecute the “predator living in the White House.”

And after months of criticism from Democrats in Iowa and New Hampshire who said they felt she had not made them a priority, Harris has hired 35 additional staffers in Iowa in recent days, raising her total in the state to about 65 — one of the largest teams on the ground here, according to people familiar with Iowa campaign operations. She also hired 25 additional staffers in New Hampshire.

“I think, early on, she didn’t have much ground game in Iowa in general,” said Scott Putney, the chairman of the Pottawattamie County Democrats, who spoke before Harris at a campaign picnic in Council Bluffs. But now, he said, “they’ve got tons of organizers on the ground. You feel it.”

Harris has also made a less-tangible shift. In challenging former vice president Joe Biden on segregation and busing during the debate, the U.S. senator from California identified herself more clearly with the liberal activist wing of the party, a move that has boosted her in the primary polling but could carry risks with centrist voters.

At her appearance at a brewery in West Des Moines, the questions were not about race or her conflict with Biden, but about the importance of defeating Trump. Several voters said her assertive performance at the debate had convinced them that she could take on the president.

“That’s what we have to do — beat Trump,” said Don Palmquist, 79, a retired carpenter from the rural town of Stanton, Iowa. “She came across as somebody that’s very confident, and that’s going to be one of the requirements to do the job this time.”

Harris’s stepped-up presence in Iowa is a major change. Since her campaign began, Democratic activists here had complained that she hardly visited and did not have much of an organization in the state. Some had concluded that her strategy was to avoid expending resources in largely white Iowa and New Hampshire and instead hope to catch fire in states with more African American voters.

One of the first questions Harris fielded as she spoke to the news media Wednesday came from an Iowa journalist who asked how she would convince Iowans that she cares about the state. She said that she would continue to show up.

Her aides say her strategy always was to make a more concerted push in Iowa and New Hampshire over the summer. The Iowa buildup, for example, had been planned since March, they say, and she spent much of the past few months focusing on fundraising so she could fund the staff expansion.

More time spent on fundraising meant less time for trips to Iowa. Now, she will have made two trips to Iowa in 12 days and could make a third before the month is up.

But circumstances on the ground have changed as well. Biden’s lead among African American voters since he joined the race has proved more durable than many strategists expected, increasing the pressure on Harris to perform well in Iowa and New Hampshire to give her momentum as she heads into South Carolina and other Southern states.

In 2008, Barack Obama struggled to win over African American voters in the South — until he won in the Iowa caucuses, which showed black voters that he could capture majority-white states.

Until now, political strategists in Iowa have said Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) had the biggest operations in the state. Many now say Harris has joined their ranks.

The Harris campaign hosted a barbecue Thursday beside the Missouri River, drawing a robust 500 people in a conservative part of the state. Many said they did not hold the infrequency of Harris’s visits to the state against her.

“It takes a long time to build a campaign up, and it’s a marathon, not a sprint,” said Derick Barnes, 30, an area resident who attended the barbecue. “But I think she’s going to be giving Iowa its due.”

At the same time, lingering questions from the debate, and from the early part of her campaign, have followed Harris through the state in recent days.

In the aftermath of her criticism of Biden for his opposition to court-ordered busing in the 1970s, she has fielded days of questions about her own stance on the issue.

After several days of varying answers, she was forced to clarify again Thursday, ultimately saying she would support federally mandated busing if a particular school district was resisting integration — but that, “thankfully,” the forces opposing desegregation in the 1960s are not at work today.

Her apparent shifts prompted Democratic strategist David Axelrod to tweet that Harris’s position, supporting voluntary but not mandatory busing in most cases, seemed to resemble Biden’s: “So what was that whole thing at the debate all about?”

Harris’s struggles on the question of busing also fit a criticism that emerged in the first months of her campaign, when some Democrats said she had trouble providing a clear vision of what she stood for.

After high-profile moments, she has sometimes had to clarify her positions, including her stance on whether private health insurance should be eliminated. When reporters asked in Iowa whether she was worried about a reputation for backtracking, Harris said that she had been “consistent” on the issues.

But most voters who attended Harris’s events did not raise those concerns. And though the Iowa trip did not make life easy on Harris — who encountered sweltering heat that caused an older woman to faint at a house party, as well as rain-induced schedule changes — some of the problems were encouraging. The church that her campaign had booked to host her town hall meeting Friday in Sioux City — an arrangement made before her debate performance — was supposed to hold about 150 people.

Instead, the event drew 300, leaving an overflow crowd on the lawn to listen to Harris’s revamped message over portable speakers.