Americans approve of Jimmy Kimmel’s return to TV by a more than 2-to-1 margin

By a more than two-to-one margin, Americans approve (58%) rather than disapprove (25%) of the decision by ABC and its parent company, Disney, to end Jimmy Kimmel’s recent suspension and let him return to TV, according to a new Yahoo/YouGov poll.

Earlier this month, ABC announced that it was pulling Kimmel’s late-night talk show, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, off the air “indefinitely” after Brendan Carr, the Federal Communications Commission chair, criticized comments Kimmel made about the motives of the man accused of killing conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

Carr also suggested the FCC could move to revoke ABC affiliate licenses as a way of forcing Disney to punish Kimmel. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said.

President Trump went further, suggesting that “networks” and “evening shows” that “give me only bad publicity” should “maybe” have their licenses “taken away.”

The Trump administration’s threats of regulatory action sparked widespread criticism from free-speech advocates, culminating in a celebrity-led boycott of Disney programming and products. ABC announced Kimmel’s return less than a week later.

The new Yahoo/YouGov survey of 1,676 U.S. adults was conducted immediately after Kimmel’s Sept. 23 comeback show. It found that while Americans are divided over whether they approve (38%) or disapprove (40%) of Kimmel’s initial remarks, they mostly disapprove of how ABC/Disney — and, to an even greater degree, the Trump administration — reacted to them.

• Just 31% of Americans approve of ABC/Disney’s decision to suspend Kimmel in the first place; a majority (54%) say they disapprove.

• Only 22% of Americans approve of the “federal government threatening regulatory action against media companies for comments like Kimmel’s,” as Carr did earlier this month. More than six in 10 (61%) disapprove.

• And even fewer Americans (16%) would approve of “the president pursuing regulatory action against media companies because they are critical of him,” as Trump suggested he might. More than two-thirds (67%) would disapprove.

Digging deeper into the data, a clear partisan pattern emerges. Consider Kimmel’s initial suspension: Democrats disapprove (90%) far more than Republicans approve (62%), while a majority of independents disapprove (57%) rather than approve (24%). Likewise, the share of Democrats (92%) and even independents (63%) who approve of ABC/Disney’s decision to bring Kimmel back is significantly greater than the share of Republicans who disapprove of that decision (53%).

In other words, the backlash to Kimmel’s comments on the right isn’t strong enough to outweigh the backlash to his suspension on the left and in the middle.

When asked which party is “a bigger threat to free speech,” more Americans say Republicans (40%) than Democrats (28%). (Another 22% say the parties are “about the same.”) Among independents, the gap between Republicans (44%) and Democrats (18%) is even bigger.

More Americans see Kimmel favorably than unfavorably

After CBS announced in July that it would be cancelling its long-running late-night program with host Stephen Colbert, Yahoo and YouGov asked a series of similar questions about politics, speech and TV.

But while Colbert’s cancellation was not popular — 33% approved; 40% disapproved — reaction to the recent Kimmel controversy has been far more lopsided in his favor.

Overall, more Americans see Kimmel favorably (46%) than unfavorably (39%). (Trump’s current rating is 43% favorable, 54% unfavorable.) Predictably, Kimmel’s numbers are overwhelmingly positive among those who say he is their favorite late-night host (92% favorable, 6% unfavorable). But he also has a positive image among those who name other late-night hosts as their favorites (56% favorable, 31% unfavorable).

In fact, Americans who say they don’t watch late-night television are the only group that gives Kimmel a net negative rating (19% favorable, 58% unfavorable). They also lean or identify as Republican rather than Democrat by a 58% to 19% margin.

When Americans were asked in July to select up to three of their favorite late-night talk show hosts, Colbert (25%) tied Jimmy Fallon (25%) for first place, with Kimmel trailing at 22%. But now Kimmel (22%) leads Colbert (21%) and Fallon (20%) by a narrow margin.

Why the shift? A significantly larger number of Democrats now name Kimmel as one of their three favorite late-night hosts: 44% today versus 35% in July. At the same time, Colbert and Fallon have lost some ground among Democrats. And while fewer Republicans still pick Kimmel as a favorite — 7%, down from 13% — it’s not enough to offset his gains on the other side of the aisle.

Kimmel is widely viewed as liberal (57%) rather than moderate (14%) or conservative (4%). But more Americans (40%) say he is “about right” in his approach to politics than say he’s “too political” (35%). More Americans also continue to favor (45%) rather than oppose (33%) “late-night talk show hosts getting involved in politics by speaking out on political issues.”

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The Yahoo survey was conducted by YouGov using a nationally representative sample of 1,676 U.S. adults interviewed online from Sept. 25 to Sept. 29, 2025. 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%.