Less than 100 days into his new term, President Donald Trump and his Republican Party are hemorrhaging public support as his policies thrash the economy, threaten Americans’ Social Security and Medicaid, and blow up the rule of law.
Trump's approval rating is now well underwater, with 54 percent of registered voters disapproving of the job he’s doing as president, compared with just 42 percent approving, according to Civiqs’ tracker. Voters seem to be deeply repelled by his handling of the economy, inflation, and even immigration—an issue he's usually held an advantage on.
This is terrible news for Republicans both for critical upcoming gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia in November, and for the rest of the GOP in the 2026 midterms.
For example, a Morning Consult poll released Tuesday morning found that for the first time since 2021, more voters trust Democrats on the economy than they do Republicans, by a 46 to 43 percent margin.
"That three-percentage-point edge for Democrats—their largest since April 2021—underlines a stark unraveling for the GOP, which had come off the 2024 election with a double-digit advantage on the matter," Morning Consult wrote.
The evaporation of Republicans’ edge on economic issues comes as they defend the tariffs Trump has levied on nearly every country in the world. Those tariffs are threatening to explode inflation, sink the country into a recession, and cost thousands of Americans their livelihoods.
Even worse for Republicans is that Morning Consult found congressional Democrats are now viewed more favorably than congressional Republicans.
"For the first time since just before the 2024 election, the average voter is more likely to hold positive than negative views about Democrats in Congress (47 to 46 percent). It leaves them more popular than Republicans in Congress, whose favorability ratings are now 10 points underwater," Morning Consult reported.
A new poll conducted by YouGov for the University of Massachusetts at Amherst also finds similarly poor results for the GOP. In it, voters overwhelmingly disapprove of Trump's handling of inflation (33 percent approve, 62 percent disapprove), trade (36 percent approve, 58 percent disapprove), jobs (38 percent approve, 53 percent disapprove), and foreign affairs (36 percent approve, 53 percent disapprove). The poll also finds just 50 percent approve of his handling of immigration—often his strongest issue in polling—while 46 percent disapprove.
Meanwhile, a Quinnipiac University poll from last week found Trump underwater on immigration, with 45 percent approving of his handling of it and 50 percent disapproving.
“Despite what you’ve probably heard, Trump’s immigration agenda isn’t actually popular,” G. Elliottt Morris, a reporter who led the now-defunct news outlet 538, wrote in a post on X. “While Americans tend to approve of ‘the way he is handling immigration’ in abstract, they are very negative on the details.”
For example, voters strongly disapprove of Trump’s policy of deporting undocumented immigrants without criminal records, Morris found. They also strongly oppose sending such immigrants to foreign prisons.
Trump is refusing to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an immigrant from El Salvador that Trump sent to that prison known as CECOT, despite an order from the Supreme Court to do so.
“The media narrative is that ‘Trump is popular on immigration.’ But as we can see, that is not really true,” Morris wrote in a blog post. “On the specifics of his policy, and especially on the on-the-ground implementation, Americans are mostly opposed to what his administration is doing. (And the data above should probably be considered an overestimate, since the polls I've used are old and conducted before the Abrego Garcia news.)”
Ultimately, Trump is not immune to political gravity. And if voters have already soured on his agenda less than 100 days into his term, things could get even uglier for Trump and his party if he doesn’t reverse course.
Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.
