Trump’s Approval Rating Is Now a Full 20 Points Underwater – jezebel.com
Another few weeks, another set of milestones smashed through on the journey to see how low a President’s raw approval numbers can possibly sink in our current era of extreme partisan polarization. When we last checked in, Donald Trump had breached an important psychological barrier, first registering polling that was as bad as his approval in the immediate wake of the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riots. It’s truly difficult to believe that the man could possibly be more widely hated now than he was then, considering that it’s only been 18 months or so since Americans chose to vote him back in to the Presidency, and yet he seems to have pulled it off, on the back of skyrocketing gas prices and an ongoing war with Iran that both the President and the Secretary of Defense are desperately trying to pretend has already ended. Leave it to personal monetary pain to speak to people in a way that their neighbors’ suffering never could.
Now he’s reached another round number in a number of polling averages: a net negative approval rating that sees him a full 20 points underwater. Trump is threatening to push past the lowest individual moments in Joe Biden’s tenure, which were unsurprisingly registered during surging post-COVID inflation, and challenge the historic lows registered by the likes of George W. Bush (during the Great Recession), Jimmy Carter (energy crisis), or Richard Nixon (Watergate). You know, right where you want to be with midterm elections on the immediate horizon. We’re talking rarefied air, here.
Stop me if you’ve heard this before — new low for Trump approval:
[image or embed]
— Conor Sen (@conorsen.bsky.social) 1:00 PM · May 12, 2026
To look at a few polling averages in specific:
— Nate Silver’s Silver Bulletin polling average saw Trump reach a new low point of 38.5% approval on Tuesday, which couples with new second term record high of 58.1% disapproval to produce a net negative of -19.6%, also a new low. Looking at the individual polls that feed into this average, you can see how dramatically he’s bled out support even via right-leaning pollsters such as Rasmussen Reports, whose average Trump approval has slipped from the mid-50s last year, to as low as 41% now. On individual issues, Trump’s polling is arguably even more dire, scoring a net -40% on questions specifically about inflation and cost of living, the issues most likely to hurt the GOP in the midterms.
— The New York Times‘ own polling average likewise continues edging downward, placing overall Trump approval at 38% and disapproval at 58%, for another average of approval numbers that is 20 points underwater.
— The Economist now has the man 21 points underwater, with merely 36% approval and 57% disapproval. It’s difficult to even hazard a guess at this point of who the remaining 5% of people are, who label themselves as “unsure.” Oh, to be that disconnected from everything happening around us.
— Even the likes of RealClearPolitics, typically the most friendly overall polling average for Trump, has him about to breach the 40% approval threshold for the first time of his second term. Another major psychological barrier, about to crumble.
The bottom is falling out here, and we’re watching it crumble in real time. And it’s not clear what if anything could staunch the flow of crumbling approval, considering that even if a conflict like the war in Iran “ended” today, it will take many months, or even years, for the lingering effects of destabilization of the oil and shipping industries worldwide to normalize. The announcement of a peace deal may being a brief reprieve to oil prices and spike the deeply irrational stock market momentarily, but don’t expect it to actually result in the return of $3 gas. In fact, Trump is so clearly terrified about the topic of gas in particular that he’s been talking this week about wanting to suspend the federal tax on it, depriving the country of a major revenue source and adding even more to the ballooning national debt because he’s worried about being blamed for something that is, yes, very much his own fault.
No one knows how this gerrymandering fiasco will pan out.
I’d just point out that:
— In Nov 2018, Trump’s RCP spread was -8.8 points — and the Dems gained 40 seats.
— Trump’s current spread is -15.8 points.
— The Dems need 6 seats to take control of the House.
[image or embed]
— Bill Grueskin (@bgrueskin.bsky.social) 8:23 PM · May 8, 2026
In a proper, functional representative democracy, the party not in power while the ruling party’s leader was inspiring such abject hatred from the populace would already be drawing up their plans for change for when they inevitably retake power in the next set of elections. Of course in the U.S., it can’t be so simple: Republicans have carved out such a deep structural advantage in a nakedly partisan Supreme Court mostly appointed by Trump himself, and the patently unjust, unequal application of law from state to state when it comes to redistricting, that it will take a resounding victory in the midterms for Democrats to merely retake the House of Representatives, even though they’re now significantly preferred via measurements like the generic congressional ballot. For the ever-feckless blue party, every major battle must be uphill.
Thank God they’ve got a historically unpopular pariah to campaign on, I guess? Do we dare even dream of a time when simply being the better alternative to Trump’s lapdogs is only the beginning of the requirements we can see fit to demand from our legislators?
© 2026 Paste Media Group. All Rights Reserved