As President Donald Trump wraps up the first year of his second term—one marked by US aggression abroad and rising political violence at home—a wave of new polls released this week shows him and his policies at remarkably high, and in some cases record, levels of unpopularity. Across nearly every major measure, Trump is generating more backlash than loyalty, deepening distrust as his personal standing continues to slide.
A new CNN poll released Friday found that nearly 60 percent of Americans describe Trump’s first year back in office as a failure. Trump is faltering even on issues that have historically been his strongest, like the economy. A majority of Americans (55 percent) say he has made the economy worse, while just 36 percent believe he has focused on the right priorities—a nine-point drop since the start of his term. CNN also found Trump’s overall job approval rating languishing at 39 percent, down from 48 percent last February. A clear majority say he has gone too far in using presidential power. You can read the full results here.
CNN’s numbers are not outliers. A new Associated Press–NORC poll, released on Thursday, shows erosion even within Trump’s own party. Only 16 percent of Republicans say the president has helped “a lot” with the cost of living, down sharply from 49 percent in April 2024. Trump’s approval on immigration—still one of his strongest issues among Republicans—has slipped as well, falling from 88 percent in March to 76 percent in the latest survey. Overall, just 38 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of immigration, a marked decline, while 61 percent disapprove. Across the poll, voters say Trump is focused on the wrong priorities, abusing power, hurting the economy, and leaving the country worse off. The survey marked his lowest approval ratings on the economy reported by AP pollsters during both stints in the White House.
Other surveys this week echoed the same themes. A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll shows Trump deeply underwater overall, with 58 percent disapproving of his job performance and just 36 percent approving of his handling of the economy. The poll also found overwhelming opposition to Trump’s foreign adventurism, with 71 percent saying the use of military force against Greenland would be a bad idea. Meanwhile, a Marist poll released Friday found that 56 percent of Americans oppose the United States taking military action in Venezuela.
The thing is mostly that, while unpopularity does have an impact, that impact is probably going to be somewhat bounded regarding the Trump administration.
Trump cannot be voted out in the midterms, and the US does not have snap elections the way parliamentary systems do, so absent him dying in office or otherwise becoming incapacitated, he will probably be around for the rest of his term.
In general, the popularity (or lack thereof) of the President affects turnout and how people vote for legislative representatives in the midterm elections.
For the Trump administration, there are a couple of major inflection points that I'm aware of.
including from the Republican side of the aisle
agrees with this. The major impact of this will be that Democrats will be able to initiate Congressional inquiries and demand that the Executive turn over a lot of information about its activities. As I recall reading, the Trump administration specifically directed its the Executive not to respond to requests for information from Congressional representatives in anything other than situations where they were legally bound to do so, which I understand breaks with convention. Basically, the way this works is that a simple majority has to start an inquiry, and put people in front of the House, and then representatives from both sides of the aisle are allowed to require them to testify. Lisa Murkowski, a moderate Republican senator who has been critical of Trump, had some comment a while back about how the only way she found out about things was in the news, so I expect that Republican legislators probably aren't getting much information either. I'd assume that the Democrats will use this both the present the administration in a negative light, and to turn up information damaging to the administration. It will let the Democrats block legislation that they don't like, though I'd assume that there will be an effort to pass any legislation that they might block and that the administration wants in the first half of the term. If they find that Trump has broken the law, they can impeach Trump, but this has limited impact (other than acting as condemnation of Trump) unless they can get a two-thirds supermajority in the Senate to convict and remove him from office; this would require a number of Republican senators to agree that he needs to be out of office, and I'm skeptical that this will happen unless there is material that comes out that is considerably more damning than anything thus far.
The US has weak party discipline; legislators are less-accountable to the party as a whole than in many countries. It's possible that some close votes could be flipped by legislators not voting strictly along party lines. For example, some Republican legislators voted to release Epstein information.
I don't know what, if any, impact there will be from control shift regarding the administration asserting emergency powers to impose tariffs. My understanding is that there are currently lawsuits underway, which the Trump administration is most-likely expected to lose, with a major ruling expected in the next week, but that there may be other legal routes for the administration to effectively impose tariffs. I am not sure that Trump's approval ratings will have an impact here.
Trump's approval probably will have an impact on his influence on Republican politicians. Trump has, in the past, threatened to and endorsed primary election opponents of those Republican politicians who disagree with him. The value of a Trump endorsement is predicated on Trump's popularity, so Trump will generally lose sway over Republican politicians if he becomes less popular.
EDIT: The Executive mostly gets to run foreign policy, so I think that regardless of what happens in Congress, aside from tariffs (which are important and are normally a Congressional power) and extended troop deployments, US foreign policy will probably continue to be largely directed by the Trump administration.
EDIT2: Oh, winning the House will give the Democrats ability to block and thus horse-trade on the federal budget. They did so before, but that was relying on the fillibuster. The Senate can always eliminate the power; it's simply a convention built on internal rules set by a simple majority in the Senate itself, which is presently controlled by the Republicans. While adverse to breaking with convention, in a serious enough case, a majority in the Senate could choose to simply remove that power from the minority. In contrast, there is no recourse if the House doesn't want to pass a budget. Pretty much all of what the President does depends on having funds to do it, and he doesn't get money unless Congress chooses to give it to him, so while it's not a very flexible tool, it is a powerful one.
The part you include in the last bit about the budget (and, more importantly, appropriations) is extremely important. The reason ICE is so out of control right now is not just policy, it's also the ginormous budget that was approved by Congress. If Democrats take over even one house of Congress, it gives them some negotiating leverage. Yes, this may lead to more shutdowns when no agreement is made. But I think if Democrats gain some power back due to ICE overreach, then even they can win the messaging battle on a shutdown, too.
But the second important bit is that if Trump eats his very last cheeseburger while Democrats control at least one house of Congress, then they have a say in who the next Vice President will be. (If the VP position is vacant for any reason, including the VP becoming President, the new President's pick must be confirmed by both houses of Congress). And, really, Democrats have no reason to confirm any VP at all, not after what McConnell did to Obama's last SC pick. If the VP spot is vacant, then they can't be available to break ties, which is like one less Republican vote. And, if the new President is unable to serve for any reason (perhaps inappropriate sectional relations? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ), then the House Speaker becomes President.
let's get a tl;dr over here
Sure, nazis don't give a fuck about polls.
the tl;dr I got from this: he's extra fucked in the long term (aka: anything beyond midterms and especially after january 19th 2028, not that I think he'll even live that long) but he can still screw us all very hard in the short term (anything from now til midterms), even if we completely dispense with the possibility of martial law and the attempted meddling in/cancellation of elections around midterms or in 2028 (which is not a bet I'd make).