President Donald Trump lamented aboard Air Force One on Tuesday that he is barred by the Constitution from running for a third term and observed, “The sad thing is, I have my highest numbers that I’ve ever had.”
That statement is contradicted by a new poll from The Economist and YouGov, which puts the president’s approval rating at just 39 percent, with 58 percent of Americans disapproving of his job performance, giving him a net approval rating of -19 percent.
The outcome is the lowest of Trump’s second term so far by YouGov’s estimation and lower than all but one of its polls conducted during his first term in the White House between 2017 and 2021.
While opinion about the president’s tenure remains predictable mainly along party lines — 97 percent of Democrats disapprove and 86 percent of Republicans approve — the results are more surprising when measured by other variables.
Just 20 percent of people aged under 30 approve of his presidency, the poll reveals, which compares with 47 percent of voters aged 30-44, 49 percent of those aged 45-64, and 43 percent of the over-65s.
There is also a sharp gender divide: whereas 46 percent of men are in favor of Trump’s actions in the White House since January, just 32 percent of women are impressed.
He is also way down among ethnic minorities, with just 11 percent of Black Americans approving of his presidency and 29 percent of Hispanic Americans.
The president also scores poorly on his handling of specific issues. Net approval of the job he has done on immigration stands at -10. At the same time, he scores -17 for his work on abortion, -19 for education, -22 for jobs and the economy, and for climate change and the environment, and -31 for tackling inflation and grocery prices, a pivotal issue for voters during last November’s election and a bad omen for next year’s midterms.
The survey finds that 55 percent of U.S. adults disapprove of his trade aggressions towards Canada, only 25 percent are in favor of his demolition of the East Wing of the White House to build a lavish ballroom, just 16 percent were pleased to see him commute the prison sentence of disgraced ex-congressman George Santos, only 8 percent would like to see him pardon Jeffrey Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell and just 4 percent Sean “Diddy” Combs.
The poll also finds that 63 percent of voters disapprove of him seeking a $230 million payout from the Justice Department as compensation for their past investigations into him and that 8 percent of respondents say they took part in a No Kings rally on October 18, which, if taken as a proportion of the population as a whole (340.1 million), would mean 27.2 million people taking the streets to oppose him.
Trump left office in January 2021, less than three weeks after his supporters had laid siege to the U.S. Capitol, with his lowest-ever approval ratings, according to CNN, with Quinnipiac (34 percent), CNN/SSRS (34 percent), Gallup (34 percent) and the Pew Research Center (29 percent) all recording swan-dives in public opinion for the first president in American history to be impeached twice.
Since completing his remarkable political comeback, his numbers have continued to slip steadily. As Trump marked his first 100 days in April, he was already down to 39 percent favorability in an ABC/Washington Post survey, while CNN had him at 41 percent, Fox News at 44 percent, and NBC and CBS at 45 percent.
By July, the furore over the Epstein files had sunk him to 37 percent in a Gallup survey, even lower than Wednesday’s Economist/YouGov score and a number he hit again in August according to Quinnipiac data, which was attributed to Epstein one more and to his decision to roll out the National Guard in D.C.
His numbers were kept low in September amid uncertainty over his tariff program and his comments attacking vaccines. By the end of the month, his disapproval rating among Republicans had hit double-digits for the first time.
Earlier this month, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found Trump’s overall approval at 40 percent, with a majority of Americans opposing his more ambitious attempt to deploy the Guard in other Democrat-run cities.
Perhaps most worrying for the Republican movement as a whole, a Pew Research poll from late last month found that Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, and House Speaker Mike Johnson were all viewed unfavorably by a majority of respondents.
