Trump’s poll numbers, confirmed

What do Americans really think of Donald Trump? We know enough people liked him, or at least agreed with him enough, to vote him into office last November. But now that the dust has settled and reality has hit, how are the president’s approval ratings looking? Do the majority approve of what he’s done so far? Or are people slowly realizing that voting for him was a mistake? 

Thankfully it’s very easy to get a rough idea on the public perception of Donald Trump thanks to The Times live polling tracker. It lists a vast collection of results from the first 100 days of the Trump administration. It also lists who carried out the polls and who sponsored them. There’s even a breakdown on which polls meet the criteria for reliability. So what do the results say?

Donald Trump’s approval rating is going down

At a glance it is immediately obvious that the majority of pollsters disapprove of the president in the more recent polls. Out of the thirty most recent (which were all conducted in March), 20 showed an overall disapproval of Trump, one was an evenly split, and nine approved of the president. The latest polls added to the tracker are somewhat damning for the president.

• YouGov/Economist — Approve: 48% Disapprove: 50%
• YouGov/Yahoo News — Approve: 44% Disapprove: 50%
• Ipsos/Reuters — Approve: 45% Disapprove: 51%
• Morning Consult — Approve: 47% Disapprove: 50%

In a lot of cases there’s only two or three percentage points between the majority. The largest disparity between approval and disapproval comes from Quinnipiac University, which conducted its poll between March 6-10 and saw 1,198 registered voters taking part. The results show an 11% difference with disapproval being 53% against 42% approving of Trump.

Interestingly, a poll conducted by the same university between January 23-27 actually showed that the approval rating was 3% higher than the disapproval, this suggests that faith in the president is on the decline.

What happens if we go back further?

Looking back to January shows that a huge majority of the results indicated overwhelming approval for Donald Trump upon his first couple of weeks in office. The highest being from RMG Research/Napolitan News Service which was conducted in the first few days of the presidency. The poll showed an 18% net margin with 57% approving of Trump against 39% disapproving. The data comes from 3,000 registered voters who responded.

Another poll from RMG conducted in mid-March still showed an overall approval rating but with a smaller net margin of 8% which was split 53% – 45%. Once again, the data comes from 3,000 registered voters who were asked to respond.

What do the results tell us?

The data seems to show a downward trend in support from Donald Trump. While most polls indicated approval for the president in the early weeks, he has become less popular as time progresses. This could be down to his unpopular policies such as scrapping DEI, laying off federal workers, and bringing in tariffs which have only made life harder for average Americans.