As President Donald Trump prepares to address Congress and the American people for the second time since returning to power last January, he is facing a serious polling problem not seen since the shambolic last days of his chaotic first term.
A series of surveys released over the last few days show the American public harboring significant doubts about his priorities and increasingly questioning whether Trump’s most prominent policy initiatives are helping solve the problems he was re-elected to handle.
Key demographics — including the independent and Latino voters whose support helped propel him to a clear win in both popular electoral vote totals over former vice president Kamala Harris — are expressing their disapproval of his performance, even on issues where he once held commanding advantages over his Democratic adversaries.
One such survey from CNN and SSRS released Monday found that a supermajority of Americans — 61 percent — say his policies will send the country in the wrong direction, while a paltry 36 percent of respondents said they approve of his performance.
That’s a 12-point drop from this time last year, when he delivered a speech to a joint session of Congress approximately six weeks into his second term.
At the time, the CNN/SSRS survey showed 48 percent of respondents approving of his performance at the time.
Now, only the most die-hard demographic groups — self-identified Republicans and conservatives plus white Americans without college degrees — hold positive views of his presidency. His approval with Independent voters is at just 26 percent, the lowest ever recorded during his political career and down from the 41 percent who approved of him at this point last year.
It’s even worse with Latino voters, whose support was instrumental in his 2024 win.
Last year, 41 percent of Latinos said they approved of his work. But now, only 22 percent say they do. The drop in Latino support comes as Trump has increased his efforts to arrest and deport more migrants. With headlines and social media showing raids in cities across the nation to detain migrants.
A second survey released over the weekend by ABC News, the Washington Post and IPSOS shows more reasons for Trump to be concerned.
Supermajorities of Americans — 65 percent and 64 percent — say they disapprove of how he’s handled inflation and tariffs, with 62 percent disapproving of his work on relations with foreign countries.
On his strongest issues, immigration and the economy, clear majorities — 58 percent and 57 percent — say they disapprove of his performance.
Overall, the ABC/Post survey found a supermajority of Americans, 60 percent, disapprove of his performance. That’s as high as his disapproval rating has been during his political career, equalling the amount who disapproved of him as he left office in 2021 after losing the 2020 election to Joe Biden, refusing to accept the result and fomenting a riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Most traditional politicians would take the feedback from voters in stride and consider adjusting their policies — or their behavior — especially at a time when voters are considering whether to let his Republican party retain unified control of Washington or hand the reins of Congress over to the Democratic Party next January.
After voters delivered a massive rebuke to Bill Clinton by handing the House to the GOP for the first time in decades, Clinton used his 1995 State of the Union to declare “the era of big government” to be “over” and set the stage for years of balanced budgets and a resulting economic boom.
Trump could, in theory, look at the dismal polling and the brushback he got from the Supreme Court on his signature — and unpopular — tariff policies last week and try something different in response. Or he could look to reassure Americans about affordability, the economy or his overall message is right for the nation.
But Trump isn’t a traditional politician, much less one who accepts bad news or changes course. Now more than ever, he only doubles down.
When Trump lost the 2020 election, his response was to pull every lever he could in a fruitless attempt to retain power. And since returning to the White House in January, he has continued to maintain that his only electoral loss in his decade-long political career was “rigged” against him.
Now, he claims — without offering evidence — that the polls are similarly fraudulent.
During a White House event on Monday to honor the families of people who were killed by people in the country without authorization, he suggested that the recent negative polling results against him are part of an organized effort to damage his presidency.
“You know, when you get a fake poll, I get them today, I saw one today that I'm at 40% 40% I'm not at 40% I'm at much higher than that,” he said.
“The thing I can't understand is why the press isn't more supportive. They're so dishonest. The stories, the polls,” he added later.
One bad result — such as the Des Moines Register survey that showed him losing Iowa to Harris in 2024 — could be dismissed as an outlier by reasonable observers.
But Trump isn’t a reasonable observer. For the last year, as his approval ratings have steadily tumbled, he and his aides have repeatedly pointed to his 2024 victory as a “landslide” that has given him an overwhelming mandate to do, in his words, “whatever [he] wants.”
But in American politics, mandates can be fickle. To the extent he ever had one, it was to address the inflation and cost-of-living issues that had been plaguing the Biden administration in the wake of multiple Covid-era stimulus packages and supply chain pressures.
Polling shows Americans don’t believe he’s done much, if anything, to do so. But in Trump’s world, everything is going great, and he’s unlikely to indicate any change in course.
Speaking in the East Room Monday, he told attendees the country is “now doing well.”
“We have the greatest economy we've ever had. We have the most activity we've ever had. I'm making a speech tomorrow night, and you'll be hearing me say that,” he said.
