Trump's Approval Hits Multiple Record Lows as Democrats Take Double-Digit Midterm Lead in One Poll

The Numbers

Donald Trump's approval rating has settled into territory his campaign never wanted to see two months before the midterms.

A Focaldata poll for the Financial Times, conducted August 28 to September 2 among 2,178 U.S. adults, put Trump's approval at 32 percent, a three-point drop from the prior month and the lowest mark in that poll's tracking since it launched in May. A Quinnipiac University national poll released September 10 found 33 percent approval and 59 percent disapproval among registered voters, with Trump's handling of the economy, his role as Commander in Chief, and the Russia-Ukraine war all hitting record lows in Quinnipiac's series.

Averages tell a similar story. As of September 8, RealClearPolitics had Trump at 39.6 percent approve versus 57.0 percent disapprove, the New York Times had him at 38 percent, and the Silver Bulletin had him at 38.2 percent, according to figures reported by USA Today and Yahoo News.

Why Voters Are Souring

The economy is the clearest driver. Quinnipiac found only 17 percent of respondents approve of Trump's handling of inflation and the cost of living, versus 69 percent who disapprove. AAA data cited by USA Today put the national average gas price at $4.15 a gallon on September 8, up 13 cents in a week and nearly a dollar higher than the same date in 2025. The Daily Beast reported diesel hit $5.85 a gallon, a new record, surpassing the previous high of $5.82 set in 2022.

The war with Iran, now past the six-month mark according to USA Today's reporting, is compounding the price pressure. Trump's tariff fight with Canada is also unpopular. Quinnipiac found 56 percent of voters think Trump is too tough on Canada, and the Focaldata poll found 56 percent oppose his 50 percent tariff on roughly $20 billion in Canadian goods, including a third of Republicans. Quinnipiac also found 70 percent of voters oppose Trump's executive order renaming Lake Ontario as "Lake America," and 60 percent oppose his White House ballroom construction project.

Even Trump's own coalition is showing strain. The Focaldata poll found his approval among Republicans fell more than two points to 72 percent, a new low in that survey, and GOP approval of his economic performance dropped nearly eight points to 53 percent. Pete Hegseth's approval as Secretary of Defense sits at just 32 percent in Quinnipiac's poll, also a record low there.

Democrats' Edge, and Its Limits

On the generic congressional ballot, Quinnipiac has Democrats up 11 points, 49 to 38 percent, among registered voters, an improvement from a 7-point Democratic lead in the same poll's late July release. Focaldata/FT has the Democratic lead at 7 points, up one point from August.

Brookings Institution analysis argues candidate quality is compounding Trump's drag on Republicans. In North Carolina, Democratic recruit and former two-term governor Roy Cooper faced no serious primary opposition and leads Republican Mike Whatley, a former RNC chair and Duke Energy lobbyist, in a state Trump has carried three times. In Ohio, former Senator Sherrod Brown holds a small lead over appointed incumbent John Husted in Fox News polling cited by Brookings, with more than half of the electorate saying Brown is "not very close" to the Democratic establishment, a contrast Brookings frames as helpful to him given how unpopular both parties are with voters right now.

The Fair Pushback on the Polls

Skepticism of these numbers isn't baseless. Polling in 2016 and 2020 underestimated Trump's actual vote share, and no single poll, including Focaldata's 32 percent read, should be treated as gospel two months out from an election that hasn't happened. Margins of error and sample composition matter, and Republicans still approve of Trump at 72 percent in the FT tracking, meaning his base has eroded but not collapsed.

That skepticism runs both directions now. An AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and USAFacts survey found only 34 percent of U.S. adults trust government certifications of election results "a great deal" or "quite a bit," down from 40 percent in 2024, and roughly six in ten adults report low trust in federal information on the economy, elections, foreign affairs, and immigration. Maryland Democrat Shannon Ingram, quoted in the AP-NORC coverage, said "it's pretty hard to trust anything that's being communicated."

A Useful Contrast

Russia offers a stark comparison point. Newsweek reported that Vladimir Putin's approval, per the independent Levada Center, fell to 76 percent in August, down 13 points from a year earlier, while the state-run VTsIOM agency showed a slump to 65.5 percent before changing its methodology and rebounding to 66.9 percent. Russia's Supreme Court banned the anti-war Yabloko party from the State Duma's party list in August, and economist Konstantin Sonin, who sits on Russia's federal wanted list for opposing the invasion of Ukraine, told Newsweek Putin "would not win elections against basically any reasonable candidate if they were had right now."

The difference is structural, not just numerical. Trump's sliding approval feeds into a real, contestable midterm where voters can flip the House or Senate in November. Putin's slide feeds into a multi-day ballot where the leading opposition party has already been barred from running. American voters distrust the system, per AP-NORC's numbers, but they still get to use it. That's the open question worth tracking through November: whether a genuinely competitive election, however messy, produces outcomes that restore any of the trust these polls say has been lost.