President Donald Trump's approval rating has sunk to the lowest point of his political career, with less than one-third of Americans now approving of his job performance, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll released Monday. The survey arrives just two weeks before the midterm elections, where Republicans are fighting to protect slim majorities in Congress.
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| President Donald Trump signs a document in the Oval Office. (File photo) |
With early voting already underway in several states, the numbers paint a bleak picture for the White House: Trump stands at 31 percent approval in the Reuters/Ipsos poll, the weakest reading the survey has ever recorded for him across both of his terms. That marks a one-point slide from his previous career low, logged just two weeks earlier.
The four-day poll surveyed 1,679 U.S. adults and carried a margin of error of about 2 percentage points, leaving the president deep in negative territory at the most critical stretch of the election cycle.
A Week of Brutal Polls
The Reuters/Ipsos result did not land alone. It followed two other scathing surveys released over the weekend that told the same story from different angles.
A Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos poll, released Oct. 18, put Trump's approval at 33 percent — a record low for that pollster as well. That represented a four-point drop since July and an eight-point fall from the same poll's October 2025 reading.
An NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll released the same day found Trump at 34 percent approval, his lowest of the second term. The depth of opposition stood out in that survey: 51 percent of respondents said they "strongly disapprove" of the president's performance.
What makes the trio of surveys especially notable is their agreement despite different methods. Reuters/Ipsos surveyed 1,679 U.S. adults over four days with a roughly 2-point margin of error, while the other two polls used different sampling designs and still landed within three points of each other. When independent pollsters converge this tightly, analysts tend to treat the picture as solid rather than statistical noise.
The Warning Signs Underneath
Beyond the headline numbers, the underlying details may worry Republican strategists even more than the topline figures.
In the NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll, 71 percent of respondents said the country was on the "wrong track" — a second-term record for the president and a 10-point jump since a similar poll in April 2025. Among Latino voters, a group that shifted toward Trump in the 2024 election, his approval sat at just 31 percent.
The Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos poll delivered another milestone that cuts at the heart of Trump's political brand: Democrats were, for the first time in a decade, more trusted to deal with the economy than Republicans. The economy has long been the Republican Party's strongest issue, and losing the edge there two weeks before Election Day is a significant blow.
Broader polling averages confirm the downward slide is not an outlier. As of Oct. 19, the RealClearPolitics average showed Trump at 38.9 percent approval against 59.3 percent disapproval. The New York Times polling average had him at 37 percent approval and 61 percent disapproval, while Nate Silver's Silver Bulletin average stood at 37.5 percent approval and 59.9 percent disapproval.
Midterms on the Line
The generic congressional ballot numbers accompanying these polls spell trouble for the Republican Party's grip on Congress. The Reuters/Ipsos poll showed Democrats ahead of the GOP by 12 percentage points — the widest lead the party has held in that survey's tracking this election cycle.
The NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll showed Democrats up by 10 points on the same measure. With early voting already underway in several states, according to reports, the window for turning public opinion around is narrowing fast.
Republicans entered the midterm cycle defending slim majorities in Congress, and the new polling suggests the party faces an uphill battle to hold them.
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| An "I Voted" sign outside a polling location in California. (File photo) |
What This Means
The convergence of three independent polls telling the same story within 48 hours is what makes this moment notable — it is not a single outlier, but a pattern across different pollsters and methodologies.
The collapse on the "wrong track" measure and the historic flip on economic trust suggest the erosion is broad-based, not tied to a single issue. Latino voters' 31 percent approval in particular signals slippage among a demographic that helped fuel Trump's 2024 victory.
The economy angle may sting the most. Through much of Trump's career, the economy has been his strongest calling card with voters, and Republicans have held a decades-long advantage on the issue. The Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos finding that Democrats now outrank Republicans on economic trust — the first such flip in ten years — suggests that advantage has cracked at exactly the wrong moment.
For the White House, the risk is less about the presidency itself than about Congress: midterm elections are traditionally a referendum on the sitting president, and a 31 percent approval rating gives Democratic challengers powerful ammunition in battleground races.
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| Voters cast ballots in voting booths ahead of the Nov. 3 midterms. (File photo) |
What Happens Next
The immediate question is whether two weeks is enough time to change the trajectory. Early voting means many ballots will be cast before any late-breaking development can move the numbers, which puts a premium on the final days of campaigning.
Republicans will likely lean harder on issues where they still hold an edge, while Democrats are expected to keep the spotlight on the polling itself, framing the election as a chance to deliver a verdict on the Trump presidency.
Watch for the final pre-election polls in the coming days — if the slide continues, the Nov. 3 midterms could reshape the balance of power in Washington for the final two years of Trump's term.
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