Numbers don’t fall in a vacuum. When a second-term president who never had the kind of honeymoon approval ratings his predecessors enjoyed starts losing another 10 to 13 points from his own starting line, political observers take notice. But what’s happening with Donald Trump’s approval ratings right now isn’t just a number on a chart. It’s a convergence of economic anxiety, a shooting war in the Middle East, and a creeping erosion in the personal traits that once served as a floor for his public support. The picture that’s emerging across virtually every polling organization tracking this White House is striking in how consistent it is.
What makes the current moment feel different from the normal ebb and flow of presidential approval is that it’s showing up everywhere at once. Online panels, telephone surveys, mixed-mode methodologies, Republican-leaning pollsters and center-left ones. They’re all saying roughly the same thing, at roughly the same time. That kind of convergence doesn’t happen unless something real is shifting underneath.
Understanding what’s driving that shift, and what it means for the president, his party, and November’s midterms, requires looking at where Trump started, where he is now, and which specific issues have done the most damage.
The Numbers: A Portrait of Sustained Decline
Three late-April surveys from Leger, Big Data Poll, and Pew Research Center were all collected between April 17 and April 28 among representative samples of American adults, pointing to a consistent shift rather than a polling outlier.
Pew conducted a national survey of 5,103 U.S. adults from April 20 to April 26, 2026, finding Trump’s approval rating at 34%, the lowest of his second term. Trend data shows approval falling from 47% in late January 2025 to the mid-30s by late April 2026, while disapproval climbed from the low 50s to 64% over that same period. Trump’s net rating deteriorated steadily, moving from -4 at the start of 2025 to -30 in the latest survey – a swing of 26 net percentage points in roughly 15 months.
The NBC News Decision Desk Poll powered by SurveyMonkey tells a nearly identical story. Overall, 37% of adults approved of Trump’s performance as president, while 63% disapproved – including 50% who said they disapprove strongly – putting his job rating at the lowest point of his second term in NBC News Decision Desk polling. Across the first two Decision Desk polls of Trump’s second term, his job rating was consistent at 45% approve, 55% disapprove. Those numbers have moved steadily in the wrong direction ever since.
The Silver Bulletin polling average, which tracks Trump’s approval daily with commentary from Nate Silver, shows his net approval rating hitting new second-term lows. Among U.S. adults specifically, the trend line has pointed consistently downward since the start of 2026, with roughly half of Americans now strongly disapproving of his job performance.