Trump's polling is terrible and getting worse
His second term is already an unambiguous failure.
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The irony is profound: Donald Trump, a man who craves adulation and perhaps deification, is the least-liked American president ever.
Trump’s approval ratings have reached historic lows. He’s polling lower than he did at the same point in his first term, and he suffers net-negative approval ratings in all but nine states. Americans overwhelmingly reject him, his policies, and his job performance as president. In fact, if the third of Americans who comprise his bedrock base of red-hatted MAGAs are held aside, the rest of the nation is now nearly unified in deeming Trump’s second term a failure, if not a disaster.
No matter the pollster or topic, no matter how questions are phrased nor the subgroup of Americans tracked, Trump and his policies are disfavored, even despised. His numbers were bad before he started his reckless Iran war and they have fallen further since. And most recent approval ratings came before Trump began circulating images that likened him to Jesus. (More on that at the end.)
Per pollster G. Elliott Morris, comparing Trump to other recent presidents 15 months into their terms confirms how badly the public rates him. At -21.6 net negative approval, Trump lags behind Joe Biden (-10.8), Barack Obama (+2.3), and a post-9/11 George W. Bush (+57.0) at comparable points of their terms. In fact, Trump already lags more than 8 points behind the 15-month mark of his own first term (-13.3).
Even if his current term is treated as a second term — when presidents tend to experience declining approval — the comparisons are still grim.
At the end of the first year of their second terms, only the Watergate-addled Nixon had a lower net approval number, -29.6, than the -16.2 net disapproval Trump had at the end of his fifth combined year in office. And that low rating came three months ago, before the ICE/CBP shootings in Minneapolis and the Iran war eroded Trump’s support by another five points and counting.
Strongly disapproved
Let’s start with Trump’s overall approval ratings.
A couple weeks ago, UMass-Amherst delivered Trump his worst approval/disapproval splits to date, with 62 percent disapproving his performance and just 33 percent approving, a net -29 approval rate.
Reuters/IPSOS has Trump doing slightly better at net -26, with 62 percent of Americans disapproving to just 36 percent approving, and a new CBS/YouGov poll this week came in at -22 net, 61 percent to 39 percent. The Economist’s latest results show a record low net negative approval of -20 for their survey. Even Napolitan News Service’s conservative-tilted pollster RMG Research pegs Trump at 58 percent to 40 percent, or -18 net disapproval. Overall, per Silver Bulletin’s weighted composite model, Trump is net -16, 56 percent to 40 percent.
More remarkable is that Nate Silver’s poll-of-polls shows that, of those 57%, fully 47% of Americans strongly disapprove.
In its February poll, NPR/Marist was the first to report an absolute majority of 51 percent strongly disapproving Trump’s performance. Even Scott Rasmussen’s RMG poll, regarded as conservative-leaning, found Trump’s strong disapproval rate at 46 percent.
Bottom line? Trump has lost the country. And half of Americans are beyond having soured on him — they’re sick of him.
Key demos and issues
Trump’s bottom-of-the-barrel support is shrinking among almost every demographic.
Pundits marveled at Trump’s ability in 2024 to cobble together a winning electoral coalition that eluded previous Republican presidential nominees — adding younger and non-white voters to his core strength among white working-class folks.
Now, he’s bleeding support among all three groups.
Among voters aged 18-34, he’s plunged from a mere -15 approval split the month after he took office in February 2025 to -60 now. After surveying data from seven polls, analyst Henry Olsen found that Trump’s support among Hispanic voters has returned to levels comparable to 2020, when Joe Biden carried the demographic by a comfortable 33-point margin, a huge swing relative to Trump’s small, 5-point margin of defeat among Hispanics in 2024.
Even the white working-class voters whom pundits declared dead to Democrats forever, have turned against Trump: The CNN/SSRS, Fox News, and NPR/Marist polls, all of which reported double-digit positive favorability ratings for him shortly after taking office in 2025, now show Trump slightly underwater with this key demographic subgroup. According to CNN’s Harry Enten, who computed a then-and-now composite rating of Trump’s approval with WWC voters, Trump has fallen 34 points, from +32 to -2, between February 2025 and today.
As for policy, Trump is net negative on almost every issue except crime and the border RMG shows Trump net negative on issues that won him the 2024 election, including inflation (-24), the economy (-21), and even immigration (-7). But RMG is a Trump-favorable outlier. The latest UMass poll has Trump faring far worse on similar issues: -25 on immigration, -36 on tariffs, -31 on jobs, and a whopping -47 on inflation. Fox News’ late March poll confirmed that “80 percent of respondents said they were concerned about gas prices, and 86 percent concerned about inflation and high prices.”
ICE and Iran
Trump’s handling of immigration and Iran obliterated almost all of his remaining non-MAGA support.
Before Iran, Trump began leaking support from citizens furious about radical use of masked DHS goons to terrorize citizens and non-citizens alike. The images and stories from Minneapolis this winter caused Americans to reevaluate their support for his immigration policies. By the first week of February, 65 percent of all Americans — including 71 percent of independents and even 27 percent of Republicans — told NPR that ICE’s enforcement actions had “gone too far.”
And then came the Iran war.
No other issue has so turned Americans, including many diehard Trumpers, against him. From social media influencers like Breck “Patriotic Blonde” Worsham to veteran conservative voices like “American Conservative” magazine’s Scott McConnell, notable Trump supporters have publicly rebuked him. Some admit they regret or are ashamed to have voted for him in the past three elections.
Initially low support for Trump’s Iran war has drifted still lower. Pew reports Trump’s Iran disapproval at 61 percent, with 44 percent strongly disapproving. CNN shows Trump’s Iran approval at just 33 percent, with 66 percent disapproving, including 54 percent strongly opposed. The Fox News poll taken at the end of March showed Trump’s net Iran rating at -18, four points worse than the net -14 margin in Fox’s poll taken at the start of the war.
And the latest CBS/YouGov poll makes clear that Americans blame the Trump Administration specifically for the mess in Iran. Roughly three-fifths of Americans said the administration has “not clearly explained its goals” for the war (66 percent), has been changing “what they claim those goals are” (64 percent), and “does not have a clear plan” for what they’re doing in Iran (62 percent).
Americans also worry about endangering the lives of their fellow countrymen, whether in uniform or not. Overall, NPR reports that 86 percent of Americans are concerned American lives will be at risk, and three-quarters of citizens oppose sending troops into Iran. According to CNN, among non-MAGA Republicans, 56 percent oppose and 20 percent favor sending troops to Iran. Heck, even MAGA Republicans by a 7-point margin, 32 percent to 25 percent, object to putting boots on the ground.
More broadly, Trump’s incessant threats and aggressive actions against Venezuela, Cuba, Greenland, Canada, and now Iran have convinced three-fifths of Americans that he’s a reckless steward of US foreign and military affairs. In fact, “33 percent now say they approve of his handling of the role of commander in chief. That’s down eight points from a January poll taken in the immediate aftermath of US military action in Venezuela and five points below his previous presidential low,” writes CNN’s Ariel Edwards-Levy. “About six in 10 say he has gone too far in trying to expand America’s power over other countries, little changed since January.”
In short, trust in Trump to lead our nation and our troops has cratered.
Dragging down the GOP
Trump’s problems are now a political-electoral albatross hanging around the Republican Party’s neck.
Every three months, Gallup asks Americans if they “lean more” toward either the Democratic or Republican parties. Typically, about 10 percent of Americans say neither, with the other 90 percent split evenly between the two major parties. Parties tend to peak following a presidential win: Democrats led Republicans by nine points, 49-40, in the fourth quarter of 2020 after Joe Biden’s win, and Republicans led Democrats by four points, 47-43, in the last poll of 2024 following Trump’s victory.
The latest Gallup recent result, for the first quarter of 2026? It has the Democrats leading by 10 points, 49 to 39 percent.
With the midterms seven months away, Trump is clearly a liability for Republicans facing reelection. The recent CNN/SRSS poll showed a 10-point enthusiasm advantage for the Democrats: 84 percent of Democrats are enthusiastic to vote, just 74 percent of Republicans. Although they may be so disgruntled they stay home this November, so-called “double-haters” — Americans who dislike both parties — favor the Democrats by a whopping 31 points, 55 percent to 24 percent.
Nowhere to go but down
Perhaps Trump has hit rock bottom, with nowhere to go but up. But history suggests otherwise.
Barring a major crisis to which Trump responds with dramatic leadership — not likely, given his poor response to covid and present misadventure in Iran — his public support at best will stabilize at his current, dismal levels. But his numbers may fall further, for two reasons.
First, Trump is saddled with the same economic problems he used to skewer Biden and then beat Harris in 2024. Trump won a second term in large part because incumbent parties in 2023 and 2024 across the free world — left, right, and center — were electoral casualties of persistent, post-covid inflation. Trump blamed Biden-Harris for high gas and grocery prices, then harvested votes from discontented Americans.
But Trump voters failed to notice that his two signature promises — removing the immigrant labor supply that keeps domestic prices low, and imposing tariffs that raise import prices — are inherently inflationary. And now crude oil prices are surging amid uncertainty about Trump’s Iran war and control of the vital Strait of Hormuz.
Days before he attacked Iran, Trump bragged during his State of the Union address about low gas prices. He wanted the credit, but now he owns all the blame for the surge in prices since. Because the trucking firms that deliver goods to grocery stores and retailers also pay more for gas, those costs get passed along to consumers. On cue, the OECD last week revised its estimate for the 2026 US inflation rate upward 1.2 points, from 3.0 percent to 4.2 percent.
“Bidenflation” is now “Trumpflation.”
The other reason Trump is unlikely to rebound is presidential fatigue, the phenomenon wherein voters tire of second-term presidents.
The fact that Trump’s second term is non-consecutive only exacerbates that issue: Although he’s technically only starting his sixth combined year in office, it feels like he’s been around longer because, well, he has been. Trump did not slink into retirement after leading the January 6 attack on the US Capitol: He has remained the central figure of American politics for a decade, including through Biden’s intervening four years.
In short, Americans are sick and tired of Trump. And with almost three years left in his second term, he is unlikely to gain strength in the months and years ahead — a reality that may make him more desperate and dangerous than ever.
As for the Jesus imagery he posted on Truth Social and then deleted? Well, the new CBS/YouGov poll asked Americans about that, too. Fully 47 percent strongly dislike it, and another 12 percent somewhat dislike it. At this point, even Jesus would have a hard time resurrecting Trump’s public approval.
Tom Schaller is professor of political science at UMBC, and author of five books, including New York Times bestseller White Rural Rage.
That’s it for today
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Yes indeed—the Trump administration *is* a host of firsts! Most corrupt. Most perverse. Most perverted. Most delusional. Most unloved. While citizens struggle, Trump (not so) secretly secures billions in personal wealth. O happy day!
Tom, as always, is spot on.
Time for the 25th! That’s going to be far from a complete fix, but it will be a start. The madman must go….