Dec. 2, 2025, 2:51 p.m.
According to Gallup’s most recent survey, only 36 percent of Americans approve of how President Trump is doing his job, a full 5-point drop over the past month. Gallup notes that the current figure is near Trump’s all-time low of 34 percent approval, which came at the end of his first term, right after the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.
Gallup’s numbers are a bit lower than other polls, possibly because they survey all adults. Other polls that restrict their samples to registered voters show Trump’s approval in the low-to-mid 40s. But even in those surveys, the overall trend is the same. Across various polling averages, the president’s approval numbers have dipped about 3 points in the last month, settling in between 40 and 43 percent.
Gallup shows that Trump has lost 7 points among his own people—84 percent of Republicans approve of Trump, down from 91 percent in October. This is not a collapse in support, but it’s a notable change.
Throughout the Trump era, surveys have consistently shown that about a third or more Republicans don’t identify as “MAGA” Republicans and are more loyal to the party than to Trump. Politico’s polling shows that it is this faction that is starting to question Trump a bit.
Concerns about the economy are driving that: 46 percent of non-MAGA Republicans say Trump has taken advantage of his opportunity to change the economy, and only 26 percent still blame President Biden rather than Trump for the economy. Both figures are about 20 percentage points higher among MAGA Republicans.
Trends from the Marquette University Law School poll offer additional evidence—their numbers show dips in Republicans’ approval of Trump on the economy and inflation. The Liberal Patriot notes that at the end of Biden’s term, his average approval rating on the economy was 34.3 percent. Trump’s now is a nearly identical 34.7 percent. It’s hard to get numbers that low unless you’re losing some of your own partisans.
Dropping a few points of favorability within one's party isn’t unusual. President Obama received similar, and sometimes lower, ratings among Democrats for significant periods of time during his presidency. The key difference is that Obama’s overall ratings stayed higher than Trump’s because he maintained more support from independents.
Trump lost considerable ground among independents in this month’s Gallup survey, slipping from 33 percent to 25 percent approval after hanging out in the mid-to-low 30s for months. He had already lost considerable support among groups that swung his way and propelled him to victory a year ago—young people and Latinos.
Pew Research last week released a poll of Latinos with some stunning numbers showing that 70 percent disapprove of how Trump is doing as president. A 55 percent majority very strongly disapprove. On immigration, 65 percent disapprove. Just over 6 in 10 say Trump’s policies have made the economy worse.
Among Latinos who voted for Trump, 81 percent approve of his job performance, down from 93 percent in February. Unlike Republicans nationally, though, Latinos who voted for Trump soured on him several months ago—by June, approval had dropped to 83 percent. Even more telling, 55 percent of Republican and Republican-leaning independent Latinos say Trump’s policies have been harmful. The same proportion of Republican and Republican-leaning Latinos are dissatisfied with how things are going in the country.
Young voters also turned against Trump over the summer, dropping from 55 percent approval in February just after his inauguration to 28 percent in July in CBS News/YouGov polling. At that time, 6 in 10 young voters said the economy was getting worse, and a similar proportion said Trump’s policies are making them worse off financially. The numbers have not improved for Trump.
While Trump won’t ever be on the ballot again, his successors will have to hold his coalition together to keep the White House, and his unpopularity poses a substantial problem for Republicans in 2026 as well. Trump’s approach is to say the polls are wrong or fake, which others then parrot.
Certainly polls have struggled to measure Trump support when he’s on the ballot. But that error at its worst only accounts for a few percentage points, which doesn’t really change the story in this case. And even the most Trump-friendly polls have his approval rating underwater.
The Trump administration has demonstrated considerable willingness to do a lot of things unilaterally. Focusing that energy on the cost of living would be a better strategy than denial.
Contributing editor Natalie Jackson is a vice president at GQR Research.
