Trump Approval Rating Record Low 36% as Economy and Iran Fallout Bite

President Trump enters the second half of 2026 politically wounded, with fresh survey data showing his standing with the American public has collapsed to depths he has not touched since taking office in January 2025. The NPR/PBS News/Marist poll conducted June 8 to 11 pegged his overall approval at just 36 percent, the lowest of his second term, against 59 percent disapproval. That 23 point gap is the widest recorded in either of his presidencies, and it lands at the worst possible moment for his party.

The number is not an outlier. Across a battery of major national surveys taken this spring and summer, Trump's approval has slid into territory that historically signals trouble for an incumbent president and his congressional allies. Economic anxiety over inflation and gas prices, layered onto public unease about the recent conflict with Iran, has pulled his ratings down in unison. With the 2026 midterms now less than four months away, the erosion has Republicans staring at a hostile political climate they cannot easily explain away.

Trump approval rating record low 36%

The Marist poll, fielded among 1,340 adults between June 8 and 11, is the clearest single data point behind the headline. It found Trump approval rating record low 36% territory, a figure that marks the floor of his second term to date and represents a steady bleed from where he stood after his inauguration. The 59 percent who disapprove outnumber his supporters by nearly two to one in the categories pollsters watch most closely.

What makes the Marist reading especially stark is the durability of the trend it captures. This is not a momentary dip tied to a single controversy but the continuation of a months long slide. The same organization's late April survey, conducted April 27 to 30 among 1,322 adults, had already logged a net approval of minus 22 points, with 37 percent approving and 59 percent disapproving. That April figure set an all time low in Marist's polling of Trump, surpassing his previous nadir of minus 20 recorded on January 8, 2021, in the immediate aftermath of the Capitol riot.

When a pollster's most recent number matches or undercuts a president's worst ever showing, the signal is hard to dismiss as noise. The Trump approval rating record low 36% figure sits squarely inside that pattern, reinforcing rather than contradicting the broader trajectory of decline that Marist and other firms have tracked since the spring.

Economy anchors the numbers down

If one issue explains the collapse, it is the economy. In the same June Marist poll, only 33 percent approved of Trump's handling of the economy, his lowest economic rating since Marist began asking the question in 2019, with 60 percent disapproving. For a president who campaigned relentlessly on prices and prosperity, a 33 percent grade on his signature issue is a political liability of the first order.

The picture is even bleaker in more granular measures. The AP-NORC poll conducted June 11 to 17 found that only 22 percent of Americans approve of Trump's handling of the cost of living. That figure is worse than the 29 percent who approved of former President Biden's handling of the same issue when he left office, a comparison that undercuts the central promise of Trump's return to power. Voters who sent him back to Washington to bring costs down are, by this measure, more sour on his stewardship than they were on his predecessor's.

Gas prices are a recurring culprit named across the surveys. Marist's April data showed the national average sitting at $4.536 a gallon, up sharply from $3.158 a year earlier. Few economic indicators register with voters as immediately as the price posted on the corner station, and a dollar and a half jump at the pump translates directly into kitchen table frustration that no messaging campaign has managed to blunt.

Multiple pollsters reach one grim consensus

The strength of the current picture lies in its agreement across firms with very different methodologies. Reuters/Ipsos polling conducted April 24 to 27 among 1,629 adults showed Trump's approval at a record low 34 percent, down two points from mid April. That reading matched the second lowest rating of his first term and sat just above his all time Reuters/Ipsos low of 33 percent, recorded back in December 2017.

The American Research Group survey, fielded June 16 to 20 among 1,100 adults, was harsher still. It put approval at 30 percent, with disapproval at 66 percent, a slide from 38 percent in June 2025 and 31 percent in May 2026. Only 26 percent of respondents in that poll approved of Trump's economic handling, echoing the Marist and AP-NORC findings on the issue that matters most.

The AP-NORC poll, meanwhile, showed Trump holding at 37 percent approval against 63 percent disapproval, essentially unchanged from the prior month. Taken together, these surveys cluster in a band running from the low 30s to the high 30s. When Marist, Reuters/Ipsos, American Research Group and AP-NORC all land within a few points of one another, the consensus becomes difficult to attribute to any single house effect or sampling quirk.

Iran conflict delivers no rally effect

Presidents facing domestic headwinds have historically counted on a rally around the flag bounce during foreign crises. Trump got no such lift. The AP-NORC survey taken June 11 to 17 came after the United States reached an agreement with Iran to end the war, yet his approval held flat at 37 percent, unchanged from the prior month. The deal that was supposed to project strength delivered no measurable political dividend.

Part of the reason is that the public was ambivalent about the military action itself. In the same AP-NORC poll, 53 percent of respondents said U.S. military action against Iran had gone too far. A majority viewing the intervention as excessive helps explain why the conflict's resolution produced no surge of gratitude toward the commander in chief. Voters appear to have processed the Iran episode as one more source of unease rather than a triumph to reward.

The absence of a rally effect is itself a warning sign. When even a war's conclusion cannot move a president's numbers, it suggests the discontent is structural, rooted in economics and daily life rather than in any discrete event that a shift in the news cycle might reverse.

Republican base shows cracks

Perhaps the most politically significant finding is not Trump's overall number but where the softness is coming from. Disapproval among Republicans in the AP-NORC tracked trend has climbed to 21 percent, up from just 5 percent shortly after Trump's January 2025 inauguration. A more than fourfold increase in disapproval within his own party points to a base that is fraying at the edges.

For an incumbent president, defections from the base carry outsized consequences. Midterm elections are decided in large part by turnout, and dispirited partisans who stay home can flip competitive districts even when they never cross over to vote for the opposition. A one in five Republican disapproval rate translates into a real risk that the enthusiasm gap that powered Trump's 2024 coalition may not materialize this November.

The economy again looms over this dynamic. Republican voters are not immune to gas prices or grocery bills, and the same cost of living pressures dragging down Trump's numbers with independents and Democrats are chipping away at his own coalition. When the discontent reaches the base, the usual partisan floor that protects a president in surveys begins to give way.

Midterm map reshaped by the record low

The Trump approval rating record low 36% reading arrives with the midterms bearing down, and the historical relationship between presidential approval and midterm outcomes is unforgiving. Presidents polling below 40 percent going into a midterm have typically watched their party absorb heavy congressional losses. A number in the mid 30s, sustained across multiple pollsters, is the kind of environment that flips chambers.

Republican strategists face a strategic bind. Candidates in competitive districts must decide whether to embrace a president whose numbers are underwater by more than 20 points or to distance themselves and risk alienating the base voters they need to turn out. Neither path is comfortable, and the economic anchor beneath Trump's ratings offers no obvious lever the party can pull before November to lift the national mood.

Democrats, for their part, are positioned to make the election a referendum on prices and affordability, the very terrain where Trump polls worst. With cost of living approval at 22 percent and economic approval languishing in the low 30s across surveys, the opposition has a ready made message that aligns with what voters say they care about most.

White House response to the polling

The administration has dismissed the surveys outright. White House spokesman Davis Ingle waved off the numbers, saying, "The ultimate poll was November 5, 2024, when nearly 80 million Americans overwhelmingly elected him." The response reflects a consistent posture from Trump's team, which has long treated adverse polling as a product of flawed methodology or media bias rather than a reflection of genuine public sentiment.

There is a logic to pointing back at the ballot box, but it carries risk. Approval ratings and vote totals measure different things at different moments, and a mandate from November 2024 does not insulate a president from the judgment voters render on his performance eighteen months later. The gap between an electoral coalition and a governing approval rating is precisely what midterm elections tend to expose.

Whether the White House can arrest the slide before November depends largely on forces it does not fully control. Gas prices, inflation and the broader cost of living answer to global markets and economic cycles as much as to policy. Until those pressures ease, the surveys suggest, the president is likely to remain mired near the historic lows that now define his second term.

Convergence of pollsters across the summer

The convergence of pollsters around a mid 30s approval rating is the central fact of Trump's summer. Marist's 36 percent, Reuters/Ipsos's 34 percent, American Research Group's 30 percent and AP-NORC's 37 percent do not agree by accident. They reflect a public that has soured on the president's core economic promise and found little in the Iran conflict to change its mind.

The erosion within Republican ranks compounds the danger for a party heading into a midterm it can ill afford to lose. A base that is 21 percent disapproving is a base that may not turn out in the numbers Republicans need, and the affordability crisis feeding that discontent shows no sign of resolving on a political timetable.

Barring a sharp reversal in the economic indicators that voters feel most acutely, the president appears set to carry these historic lows into the fall campaign. For an administration that measures success by the size of its 2024 victory, the numbers now on the board tell a very different story about the state of the country's mood.