WASHINGTON — President Trump enjoyed the highest approval ratings of his political career when he entered office in January, with roughly half the country supportive of his return. Yet, 100 days into his second term, Trump has fallen to polling lows similar to those that challenged his presidency the first time around.
Polling data across multiple research firms are in agreement that Trump’s handling of the economy, as well as the prospect of a constitutional showdown with the courts, have eroded the support he earned among independent and unenthusiastic voters in 2024 — swing constituencies that secured his decisive comeback to the White House.
But it is not just these groups that are losing faith in the president. “We’re largely seeing a decline across the board,” Jocelyn Kiley, director of U.S. political research at the Pew Research Center, told The Times.
A Pew poll released last week found that 59% of respondents now disapprove of the president’s job performance, and only 40% approve — a historically low approval rating at this point for any modern president, except for Trump himself, who performed at a statistically similar level during the same period of his first term. Other polls released last week, from YouGov, Ipsos/Reuters, Fox News and American Research Group, found the margin of public disapproval for Trump’s job performance was more than 10 percentage points.
Only one other president in the last 45 years, Bill Clinton, polled below 50% approval at this point in his presidency — and Clinton was barely underwater, at 49%, during that time.
Two of Trump’s most high-profile programs appear to be dragging him down. Of those polled by Pew, 59% of respondents found that Trump’s team had been “careless” in its campaign to shrink the size of government. The same number disapprove of the president’s tariff policies, after Trump announced a global trade war against allies and enemies alike this month.
Another poll, by Ipsos/Reuters, found that Trump’s approval rating on the economy had fallen to 37% — a striking figure on a policy that “has long been one of his relative strengths,” Kiley said. Exit polling from the November election found that 53% of voters viewed Trump as more trustworthy than his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris, on the economy.
Without costly daily tracking polls, and without more data to analyze over a longer period, it is difficult for researchers to determine whether a single point or event caused an acute collapse in the president’s support. But polling around Trump’s decision to launch a global trade war April 2, levying tariffs on “friend and foe alike” that economists warned could send the country into recession, showed widespread disapproval across party lines.
And a clear majority of Americans — including two-thirds of Republicans and 90% of Democrats — said that the Trump administration has to follow the rulings of federal courts, amid questions over whether the White House is defying judges’ orders. Even higher percentages said that Trump was required to follow Supreme Court orders.
Another poll, released by New York Times/Siena on Friday, found that 54% of Americans believed that Trump is “exceeding the powers available to him,” with even larger majorities describing his presidency as “chaotic” and “scary.” Approval among independents in their poll registered at just 29%.
“Donald Trump was elected for four reasons: Bring down inflation, juice the economy, stop illegal immigration and get away from woke culture,” said Whit Ayres, a veteran Republican pollster who has consulted Republican senators and governors for more than three decades. “The policies he’s adopted, especially on tariffs, have had the effect of increasing inflation and slowing the economy — the exact opposite of why people voted for him.”
“He clearly gets his best marks on immigration, but even there, he’s undermining his strengths by what appears to be ignoring clear court orders,” Ayres added. “Everyone is fine with deporting immigrants who have committed crimes. But that’s very different from deporting people mistakenly, without a hearing, to prisons overseas without the ability for parole.”
The Pew poll also found that Trump’s support was eroding across demographic lines. Support among Hispanic voters is down to 27% from 36% at the beginning of his term. Similarly, his approval is down to 14% from 19% among Black voters, and down to 29% from 47% among Asian American voters — a particularly large drop that could be attributed to a small sample size for the subgroup, Kiley said.
“It really has been seen across demographic groups,” Kiley said, “but one key difference is that his approval rating has declined a little more sharply among people who voted for him but weren’t strong supporters.”
“Every president, starting out their first term, often has a little bit of a honeymoon period,” Kiley added.