President Trump is closing out the first year of his second term with a slight rebound in his approval ratings, but the numbers are still far lower than where they stood at the beginning of the year as concerns over the economy take hold.
Trump’s approval tumbled to a second-term low of 41 percent last month amid the record-breaking government shutdown, according to Decision Desk HQ’s poll aggregate. Since then, it’s ticked up to around 45 percent, which has been the rough average for him since taking office.
But signs suggest the president still faces headwinds as he enters 2026. Recent polls show the president with some of his lowest-ever economic approval ratings amid steep tariffs, high prices and cost-of-living issues.
“Roughly a year in, he’s right in the middle. He’s right where, basically, he’s been all year, which is unremarkable. It’s remarkable because it’s unremarkable,” said Scott Tranter, the director of data science for DDHQ, of Trump’s overall approval.
The Republican started the year above water, coasting off his 2024 win and excitement around the inauguration, but his ratings tumbled in the spring as his administration ramped up its controversial crackdown on immigration and as he slapped steep tariffs on trading partners, roiling the stock market.
The president’s score recovered from around 44 percent in late April to 48 percent in June, according to DDHQ’s aggregate. Americans “got a little bit more comfortable” with the tariff impacts, Tranter said, and headlines around the immigration crackdown lightly “trailed off,” easing frustrations.
For the rest of the summer and into late October, Trump’s approval hovered around the mid-40s, the tracker shows, before this fall’s government shutdown ushered in new economic woes that helped drag down his approval to a second-term low of roughly 41 percent.
The end of the history-making shutdown in mid-November has since appeared to buoy Trump, who rebounded to roughly 45 percent in the latest DDHQ update, against 52 percent who disapprove, though that’s still a fall from where he was when he reentered the Oval Office.
This week, a new Emerson College Polling surveyput him at 41 percent, down 8 points since the start of his second term. A Reuters/Ipsos poll put Trump at 39 percent approval, close to his lowest point this term. An early December Associated Press/NORC poll had Trump at 36 percent support, down from 42 in March.
Trump last month touted that he had received “THE HIGHEST POLL NUMBERS OF MY ‘POLITICAL CAREER,’” a claim experts took issue with.
“His second term has generally been better than his first term, in terms of approval ratings. His lows are higher, and his highs are higher,” Tranter said. “I don’t know that I would say it’s the highest of his political career.”
Gallup polling in November found Trump with a 41 percent average approval rating across his second term so far, on par with his overall first-term average of 41 percent, but slightly better than the 37 percent logged in November 2017.
Former President Biden, by comparison, logged 42 percent in November of his first year, according to Gallup’s data.
Trump’s biggest weakness is the economy, despite leaning heavily into his strength on the issue and promises to lower prices as he campaigned in 2024.
Trump has dismissed the issue of affordability as a Democratic “con job,” and told Politico in a recent interview that he would grade the economy as “A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus.”
But polls suggest Americans feel differently.
Asked to rate the president’s handling on the economy with a grade scale of A through F, a 36 percent plurality of voters in the Emerson College Polling survey gave the president a failing grade, compared to 22 percent who have him a top A grade.
In a Harvard CAPS-Harris poll this month, nearly six in 10 voters, including 21 percent of Republicans, said the president is losing the battle against inflation, which ranked alongside affordability as the top issue for voters — though 55 percent nevertheless said they trusted the Trump administration and Republicans to manage the economy over Democrats in Congress.
More than seven in 10 respondents to a Fox News poll rated economic conditions negatively, and nearly six in 10 said they think the Trump administration is focused on the wrong things.
And though Trump has continued to cast blame on Biden for the affordability crisis, 57 percent of respondents in a new Quinnipiac University poll said Trump is more responsible for the current economy than his predecessor.
“The economy has only grown in its importance since the beginning of his term, and he’s starting to be in a territory where he owns it. He can’t just blame it on Biden,” Tranter said.
Trump stopped in battleground Pennsylvania earlier this month to make his case that his policies have boosted the economy and helped Americans financially, touting that prices are “coming down tremendously” while at times dismissing affordability criticisms as a “hoax” from Democrats.
“He’s hitting the high points. Whether voters believe him or not, that remains to be seen,” Tranter said of Trump’s messaging.
He noted that Republicans have largely “held strong” in their support for his economic handling, but that independents have critically wavered.
Meanwhile, one of Trump’s strong suits is his tackling of immigration issues, according to polls.
His best approval number in the Fox News poll, for example, was on border security, with a 51 percent majority. And his second-most popular policy in the Harvard CAPS/Harris poll, behind lowering prescription drug prices, was “deporting illegal immigrants who have committed crimes,” with 80 percent support.
The AP-NORC report last week also found border security remains Trump’s best issue — though his score has fallen from 49 percent in March, shortly after he took office, to 38 percent in December.
That includes a notable drop among Republicans, ticking down from 88 percent support for his immigration handling to 80 percent in the same period.
And in a recent Pew Research survey, conducted in October but shared this week, 53 percent of U.S. adults said the administration is doing “too much” on deportations.
“When we’re talking about where he’s given up ground or stayed strong, on immigration and the economy, he was just above 50 in the positive territory and all these issues when he started, and now he’s just below 50 in the negative territory on both of these issues,” Tranter said.
“So the magnitude of movement hasn’t been big, but the magnitude of movement on economy has been more down than [on] immigration.”
As Republicans grapple with off-year election losses and prepare for a tough fight to hold onto Congress next year, some in the president’s own party have raised concerns about his approach to the issue of affordability.
Other recent polling has suggested Trump has lost some ground among his MAGA base, raising questions about where those voters might turn in 2026 and beyond as economic frustration continues to build.
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