President Donald Trump scored the lowest voter approval rating of any president during the midterm elections in a new exit poll.
Trump’s job approval rating sits at 38 percent, according to a CBS News exit poll, down from his 45 percent approval rating in the 2018 midterms during his first term.
It’s also lower than the 44 percent that Joe Biden received in 2022 and the 44 percent that Barack Obama received in 2010.
Even George W. Bush, who was in the midst of his “War on Terror” in the 2006 midterms, received a better approval rating than Trump at 43 percent.
The dismal numbers came as midterm elections are set to determine whether Republicans maintain control of Congress. The findings signal growing weariness over his aggressive use of tariffs and continued unhappiness with the war with Iran.
Only 17% of U.S. adults approved of Trump's handling of the cost of living in a separate poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Approval of the Republican president on the economy overall slipped to 26%, a new low.
A majority of U.S. adults, 65%, blamed Trump's policies for persistently high costs more than factors outside of his control.
Democrats held surprise leads in red states on the eve of voting
The Democratic Party’s Senate candidates were leading their GOP counterparts in several key battleground states on the eve of voting, including Texas and Alaska, where the president won comfortably in 2024, according to the latest New York Times polling.
Trump has been hitting the campaign trail with an aggressive rally schedule, asking voters to pretend that he is on the ballot as he tries to bolster turnout.
Even so, he remains deeply unpopular, with even many Republicans faulting him for failing to deliver on promised relief.
“I was hoping it would be better or different, but it’s not really good,” said Robert Gault, 66, a retired factory worker from Bradford, Pennsylvania, who describes himself as a Republican. “Our president, I thought, was going to help the country, and so far he has not really seemed to have done that with the economy or in general. He said, ‘Make America Great Again.’ And I have not seen him do that.”
Trump’s rating drops to 32% as voters favor Democrats on the economy
A Reuters/Ipsos poll last week showed Trump's overall rating at 32% heading into the midterms.
The survey showed registered voters favoring Democrats over Republicans on the generic congressional ballot, 47% to 36%, with the lead holding among likely voters at 53% to 44%.
The congressional race has turned sharply on inflation after February military strikes on Iran drove fuel prices higher.
In the poll, 73% of voters said their cost of living was heading in the wrong direction.
Voters now favor Democrats over Republicans as better economic stewards by 37% to 33%, while 46% of Democrats report high enthusiasm to vote compared with just 30% of Republicans.
Trump's current approval on the economy marks a 14-percentage-point drop from March 2025, just after he took office for the second time.
His struggles on the issue are a significant departure from his first term, when the economy was often a point of strength.
Much of the 2024 campaign saw Trump hammer Democrats on inflation and promise to lower prices.
Now, there is widespread disappointment with his performance.
Rising food and gas prices trigger widespread buyer's remorse, even among Trump voters
About 7 in 10 Americans say Trump's handling of the cost of living has been “worse than expected.”
That figure includes roughly half of Republicans, about 6 in 10 of whom now disapprove of his handling of the issue.
Over recent months, Americans have grown more worried about affording basics like groceries and gas, with roughly half of U.S. adults saying they are “extremely” or "very" concerned about both.
Prices are “extremely exorbitant. Just the cost of everything is going up as a result of fuel,” said Pedro Sanchez, 52, of Perris, California, a law enforcement worker who voted for Trump. “I used to have a lot more disposable income. I don’t have that anymore. It’s gotten eaten up because of all these increases in the cost of everything.”
Bethany Lnenicka, 41, who operates a small farm in Fairfax, Iowa, voted for Trump three times and hoped his second term would match his first. “Groceries are just like kind of out of control,” she said. “It seems like everything is going up... And of course your income doesn’t go up.”
Kristen Slaven, 41, a therapist in Gluckstadt, Mississippi, who typically votes Republican, agreed: “It definitely doesn’t feel like we have trended in the right direction. Obviously, wars don’t help... but our focus on renaming bodies of water and pieces of land, that’s just stupid to me when people can’t feed their family.”
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