Trump Approval Rating Hits New Low Ahead of Midterms
Left 50%
Center 0%
Right 50%
1 left · 0 center · 1 right
What happened
President Donald Trump's job-approval rating has fallen to new lows in multiple surveys in the weeks before the midterm elections. A Reuters/Ipsos poll of 1,277 likely voters, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, found overall approval at 32 percent, down three points from the prior week and an all-time low in that series. Approval among Republicans dropped from 82 percent to 73 percent over one week, from 86 percent in January of this year and 91 percent after Trump's January 2025 inauguration; since January, Republican support for his handling of the economy has fallen to 56 percent and for the cost of living to 44 percent. A Wall Street Journal poll put Trump's approval at 37 percent, the lowest for a president shortly before a midterm in that outlet's polling. Recent national surveys have placed overall approval between 29 percent and 39 percent.
Sourcing check · Mostly on the record · 2 articles
1 of 2 articles cite a named source for the story. It was on the record from the first report.
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- How it developed
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This is about who is cited, not whether the story is true. Each source below says what it names. How we count
Omitted — what each side leaves out
Unpacked
Left-leaning and right-leaning coverage are tracking different polls, and only the latter reports Trump losing Republicans. Left-leaning coverage puts him at 37 percent in a Wall Street Journal survey billed as a pre-midterm record. Right-leaning coverage puts him at 32 percent in a Reuters/Ipsos survey. Only that account notes Republican approval fell to 73 percent in a week, a fact that recasts a generic midterm slump as a problem inside his own party.
Left-leaning coverage reaches for "historic low," a ranking against other presidents this close to a midterm. Right-leaning coverage uses "new low," which only compares Trump with himself.
Neither side asks whether the Journal survey shows the same drop among Republicans, or why two polls sold as the same story sit so far apart.
Bottom line
A Hill reader and a Breitbart reader would not even agree on the number, and only the Breitbart reader would know Republican support had fallen to 73 percent.
The receipts — 2 facts one side's coverage lacks
- Republican approval was 91 percent following the inauguration in January 2025
- Approval remains at an all-time high among self-described MAGA Republicans
The Left View
Left-leaning coverage, drawing on the Wall Street Journal survey, frames the result as a "record low" and "historic low" for a president only a few weeks from the midterms. The Hill presents that timing, rather than any single policy dispute, as what makes the slide politically consequential.
The Right View
Right-leaning coverage treats the Reuters/Ipsos decline, including the drop among Republicans, as real but incomplete. Breitbart notes that approval remains at an all-time high among self-described MAGA Republicans and that Trump's allies have shifted to highlighting "leftward extremism, such as the rise of Democratic Socialists," to hold base enthusiasm. It reports that Democrats lead by a wide margin as the party better on inflation, while Reuters/Ipsos and NBC News show the parties "all knotted up" on the overall economy, and that Democrats last week criticized Trump after he called fuel costs "a very inexpensive price to pay for what we've done" following attacks on Iran's nuclear facilities. Quoted Republican strategists warn of "a major risk that a lot of Republicans will be staying home in November, while Democrats turn out in droves," attributing sapped enthusiasm to "the Iran war strategy and rising gas prices," and argue the party has been "playing defense versus offense" by not stressing that "the Biden economy was far worse than anyone imagined." Ford O'Connell said that if Republicans "stop pushing right now, they will certainly lose both the House and the Senate," but that they "should hold onto the Senate" and could still limit House losses.
Our Take (balanced)
The left's strongest argument is that the pre-midterm timing of the slide is historically unusual, with the Wall Street Journal recording its lowest such reading and Reuters/Ipsos an all-time low, which center reporting also called a "warning sign for GOP." The right's strongest argument is that the damage is concentrated outside a still-solid MAGA core, that the parties remain tied on who would better handle the overall economy, and that Republican analysts still project a Senate hold if the party goes on offense about inherited conditions. The central unresolved tension is whether the documented erosion among ordinary Republicans over the Iran conflict, gas prices, and cost of living will drive a large turnout and vote penalty in November, or whether MAGA intensity plus competitive economic perceptions will contain the losses.
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