Americans give President Trump broadly negative assessments, according to a Washington Post-Ipsos poll.
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Americans give President Donald Trump broadly negative reviews for his handling of key issues, say they are strained by the cost of living and are pessimistic that the administration’s start-and-stop negotiations with Iran will lower gas prices or prevent the Iranians from developing a nuclear weapon, according to a Washington Post-Ipsos poll.
Strikingly, Trump has lost enthusiasm among many fellow Republicans, a core source of his power for more than a decade. Reduced enthusiasm among those base supporters jeopardizes his party’s hopes of retaining control of Congress in November’s midterm elections.
Trump’s inability to shake these negative perceptions of his presidency within the broader public — especially on the economy and the war in Iran — further clouds prospects for Republicans this fall. Republican majorities in the House and Senate are both at risk, and a Democratic takeover of either chamber or both would hamper the president and dramatically change the governing dynamics in the capital for the last two years of Trump’s term.
Trump’s overall approval rating stands at 37 percent, identical to what it was in February. His disapproval is 61 percent, statistically unchanged from the previous poll. Among registered voters, Trump’s approval is 40 percent, little different than in the spring.
That puts Trump’s approval on par with when he left office in 2021, after he lost his reelection bid and his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol.
Beneath those overall numbers are signs that Trump’s base is weakening.
A new low of 15 percent “approve strongly” of Trump, down from 19 percent in February, while 22 percent “approve somewhat.” This is the first Post-Ipsos poll where significantly more than half of Trump approvers support him only “somewhat,” rather than strongly. During his first term, about two-thirds of those who approved of his handling of the presidency did so strongly.
Trump’s approval among self-identified independents remains low, at 26 percent and with only 6 percent strongly approving, while 71 percent disapprove. All are nearly identical to the assessment of independents in April. While 81 percent of Republicans approve of Trump’s job performance, that drops to 52 percent among Republican-leaning independents.
Sixteen months into his second term, Trump is unpopular across a range of sociodemographic groups, including men and women as well as every age, education, income and racial group. Among the exceptions, Trump’s approval rating stands at 50 percent among rural adults, 53 percent among White men without college degrees, 57 percent of White Catholics and 70 percent among White evangelical Protestants.
Assessments of Trump’s handling of the economy and Iran are worse than his overall ratings, with 33 percent of Americans saying they approve of his economic stewardship and 29 percent approving of his conduct in overseeing the war with Iran. Immigration is a relative strength, with 40 percent approving. That is unchanged from a low point in February but significantly lower than at the beginning of his current term, when 50 percent approved of his immigration actions.
During the last year of Trump’s first term in office, most Americans rated Trump’s handling of the economy positively. That has changed significantly in his second term: Today the economy has become a political liability for the president and his party.
The sense of pessimism about the economy comes in answers to a variety of questions in the new survey. By more than 2 to 1, Americans say they expect the economy to get worse rather than better in the next year.
Most Americans now doubt their living standards will improve. Asked whether they and their families will “have a good chance of improving your standard of living,” 40 percent said yes and 59 percent said no. In 2018, during Trump’s first term, 65 percent responded positively to a similar question in the long-running General Social Survey.
A new high of 43 percent say they are “not as well off” as when Trump returned to office, a 12-point increase since February and on par with views toward the Biden administration. In 2018, only 13 percent said they were worse off than when Trump began his first term.
Two-thirds of Americans say groceries are unaffordable (66 percent), up from 45 percent before the war began in February. Inflation data doesn’t show a sharp increase in grocery prices, but this might reflect the broader impact of months of higher prices for gas and other items.
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A year ago, the Republican-controlled Congress passed, and Trump signed, what they then called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The measure extended tax cuts approved during Trump’s first term and included a variety of other tax and spending measures. Republicans have since begun calling the bill the “working families tax cut,” hoping that rebranding will reshape public opinion about the bill.
The strategy is not working, with 19 percent saying they paid less in taxes due to the measure while 25 percent think they paid more in taxes, according to the Post-Ipsos survey. Another 25 percent say they see no difference, and 30 percent say they are unsure what impact the bill had on their taxes. Even among Republicans, about as many say they saw their taxes increase or did not change as said they paid less in taxes.
Average tax refunds increased by 11 percent this year to $3,275, driven by both tax cuts and overpayment in 2025. The Treasury Department said 97 percent of filers received a tax cut compared with what would have happened if Trump’s 2017 tax cuts had expired, a contrast many tax filers may not have noticed.
Trump has claimed that the negotiations to bring the Iran conflict to an end — something that seems more distant today than a few weeks ago — will result in a rapid decline in gasoline prices. Most Americans are not persuaded.
About 6 in 10 doubt negotiations will bring gas prices down to normal. Gas prices averaged $3.89 this week, according to AAA, down from a peak of $4.56 in May but still far higher than $2.93 before the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran.
Trump and other officials had predicted a relatively short war, but it has dragged on for roughly five months. Last week, the president announced the end of a ceasefire and resumed strikes against Iran. This week he announced the reimposition of a blockade on Iranian ports, then appeared to ease off that strategy, adding to confusion about the state of possible talks with the Iranians.
All this has come in the weeks after he hailed the signing of a preliminary deal designed to move to a more serious phase of negotiations over the ultimate state of the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s nuclear program.
Today, two-thirds of American adults say they are not confident that U.S. military actions and ongoing negotiations will prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, pessimism that has changed little since April and is similar to pessimism toward the Obama administration’s nuclear deal when it was crafted in 2015.
About 1 in 4 think negotiations between the U.S. and Iran will result in a better deal than the broad agreement negotiated under President Barack Obama. Nearly 4 in 10 think it will be worse, while the rest think it will be about the same or are unsure.
As the war toggles repeatedly between resumptions of military strikes and efforts to stop military action in favor of negotiations, 28 percent of Americans say the war has been worth fighting, compared with 68 percent who say it was not.
The assessment of this war is worse than in any Post-ABC News poll during the long Iraq War and on par with the worst ratings of the war in Afghanistan, which came in July 2013, when 28 percent said that conflict was worth fighting and 67 percent said it was not.
Beyond that, slightly more than half of Americans say the country’s leadership in the world has gotten weaker under Trump, while 29 percent say it has gotten stronger and 18 percent say it has remained about the same.
Read detailed results of the Washington Post-Ipsos poll. The poll was conducted online July 8-13 among 2,648 U.S. adults nationwide reached through the Ipsos KnowledgePanel, an ongoing panel of U.S. households recruited by mail using random sampling methods. Overall results have a margin of error of plus or minus 1.9 percentage points; the error margin is 2.2 points among the sample of 2,092 registered voters. The sample was weighted to match population demographics, 2024 turnout/vote choice and political partisanship.
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