President Donald Trump’s net approval fell to minus 22.4 in Nate Silver’s tracker on Thursday, its lowest point across either of his White House terms. It comes as VoteHub’s polling average also shows Trump’s net approval at a record-low minus 22.4 points, worse than any president at this stage since polling began in 1945, according to VoteHub head of data science, Zachary Donnini. An unpopular president can make the national environment harder for candidates from the governing party, making this latest record low significant just weeks out from the November 3 midterm elections.
"Trump now has the lowest net approval of any president at this point or earlier in their presidency since polling began in 1945," Donnini said in a post on social media platform X. "It's now more than 10 points worse than both his own first term and Biden's at the same point." White House spokesman Davis Ingle told Newsweek previously that the 2024 election was the "ultimate poll," arguing that nearly 80 million Americans backed Trump’s agenda. Ingle added that the president had made "historic progress" on jobs, inflation and housing affordability, with further effects still to come.
Newsweek has contacted the White House press office for comment on the Nate Silver tracker and is awaiting a response. Republican candidates in competitive races could be most vulnerable if swing voters turn against the party or if less enthusiastic Trump supporters prove less motivated to vote. Trump’s current deficit in Nate Silver’s closely watched tracker poll is nearly twice the minus 11.6 recorded at the equivalent stage of his first term in 2018 and is also worse than Joe Biden’s minus 9.6 at the same point in his presidency.
The result does not predict an election outcome, but it shows that opposition is both broader and more firmly held than support. Silver said Trump’s latest net rating was below every point in his first term, including the period after the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. At day 612 of the current presidency, the tracker put him at minus 22.4, against minus 11.6 on the comparable day in 2018.
"Trump approval now at -22.4, his low point for the term and now lower than at any point in his first term, even after Jan. 6," Silver wrote on X. "By comparison, he was at a ‘mere’ -11.6 at this point in 2018." Net approval is calculated by subtracting the share who disapprove from the share who approve. With Trump at 37.6 percent approval, the average implies that disapproval is close to 60 percent.
The historical comparison is politically striking, but it should not be read as a forecast. Midterm results are decided district by district and state by state, where candidate quality, turnout, partisanship and local issues can outweigh national opinion. Still, presidential approval offers a measure of the climate in which those contests take place.
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