President Donald Trump's approval rating set a new low for his second term in the latest Quinnipiac University poll released on Wednesday (August 27).

The survey, which was conducted over a five-day span and concluded on Monday (August 25), had Trump at a 37% approval rating and a 55% disapproval rating, with a net negative 18-point approval rating, the lowest since January 2021, the final month of his first term in office. The poll also marked a 21-point drop for Trump since his inauguration in January, when he entered his second term with a 46% approval and 43% disapproval rating.

On Tuesday (August 26), Gallup released a poll showing a historic divide among Trump's approval rating. The president is reported to have a 40% overall job approval rating with 93% of Republicans supporting his performance compared to just 1% among Democrats.

The 92-point difference matches largest-ever partisan divide he previously set during his first term in October 2020, with no other president ever exceeding a gap of 86 points. Additionally, the reported 1% of Democrat support is tied with the previous low set by Trump in June.

The YouGov/Economist poll conducted between August 15 and 18 previously showed that 47% of respondents strongly disapprove Trump's second term in office compared to 23% who strongly approve his job performance. Only 27% of respondents say they either "somewhat approve" or "somewhat disapprove" the president's second term performance.

Trump previously had a 43% strongly disapprove rating in the YouGov/Economist poll conducted earlier this month. The president began his term with a 36% strongly disapprove rating and a 34% strongly approve rating.

Last week, Trump's approval rating dropped to its lowest level of his second term in the Reuters/Ipsos poll. Trump is reported to have a 40% approval rating, which matched a previous low-point and was 7% down from the beginning of his second term, according to the six-day survey.

Trump also had a 38% approval rating in the Pew Research Center poll released earlier this month, a 9% decrease from its survey in February at the beginning of his second term, as well as a 60% disapproval rating. The president's drastic polling decline showed a significant drop among his 2024 voters and adults who chose not to vote in the last presidential election.

Trump's recent rollout of tariff policies and the 'One Big Beautiful Bill' were among the factors in his disapproval. A majority 61% of respondents said they disapproved his tariff policies and 46% said they approved of the tax and spending law.

Additionally, 53% of respondents said Trump was making the federal government worse while only 27% said he was improving it. The Pew Research Center's national survey was conducted among 3,554 adults between August 4 and August 10.

Trump's net approval rating was reported to have seen a positive shift, however, still remained negative, according to the Economist/YouGov poll released on August 12. The survey, which was conducted between August 9 and 11, showed that 44% of U.S. adult citizens had a favorable opinion on Trump, while 52% viewed him unfavorably, for a net score of -7.

The president had previously had a 42% favorable rating and a 56% unfavorable rating for a -14 net score during last weeks poll, as well s a 50% favorable and 48% unfavorable rating for a +3 net score at the beginning of his term.

Polling expert Nate Silver reported that Trump's net approval rating has reportedly "fluctuated between -.8.5 and -8.9" since August 1 and seen a "relatively consistent decline" between June and late July, but has "reached another steady state," in his Silver Bulletin Substack released on Monday (August 11). Silver noted that the president's scheduled meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin and potentially Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as well as his latest round of tariffs taking effect last week, could factor into another shift.

Last month, Silver reported that Trump's approval rating had "started to drop more quickly" on his Substack blog. Silver gained notoriety for successfully predicting 49 of 50 states in the 2008 presidential election, as well as former President Barack Obama's re-election win in 2012 and Biden's win in the 2020 election.

The pollster was, however, criticized for giving Hillary Clinton a 71.4% chance of winning over Trump after the former president 304 electoral college votes to win the election.

"I think people shouldn’t have been so surprised," Silver told the Harvard Gazette in 2017. "Clinton was the favorite, but the polls showed, in our view, particularly at the end, a highly competitive race in the Electoral College. We had him with a 30 percent chance, and that’s a pretty likely occurrence. Why did people think it was much less than that? I think there are a few things."

Scott Ryfun

Scott Ryfun