How Low Can Trump’s Polls Go?

We may soon get the chance to test whether materialist or culturalist interpretations of politics are closer to the truth

Donald Trump’s second term aggregate approval ratings of Monday, August 28, 2025, from Real Clear Politics.

That graph is striking, isn’t it?

On the first day covered by the graph (January 27, one week after Trump’s second inauguration), the president enjoyed 50.5 percent approval, while 44.3 percent of the country disapproved of the job he was doing. That placed him 6.2 percentage points above water.

In the entirety of his first presidency, Donald Trump never enjoyed numbers that strong.

But just three months later, the president’s approval looks much more like what it did through the bulk of his first administration. On Monday of this week, Trump hit 45.3 percent approval, with 52.4 percent disapproving. That puts him 7.1 points under water, a net decline of more than 13 points in just three months. For most of the first Trump administration, he was quite a bit further under water than he is today. But he had farther to fall this time—and it’s still very early in his second term.

This has those opposed to Trump getting excited, especially since the president’s trade policy—with its combination of extremely high tariffs on goods imported from China and wildly fluctuating rates on the remaining countries of the world—looks highly likely to cause slowly deepening economic suffering, on top of the painful hits the stock market has already taken, over the coming weeks and months. How low will the president’s approval fall as the economy sinks into what could be a painful downturn that Democrats are sure to convincingly brand “The Trump Recession”?

The conventional wisdom is fast becoming: Pretty damn low! And I agree that’s what one would expect from a situation in which a president single-handedly pursues policies that generate economically punishing consequences for American workers and families—at least if politics is an activity structured by reality. The trouble is, we don’t really know if it (still) is.

Where Is Trump’s Floor?