By Andy Brack
America seems to be souring on President Donald Trump.
This may not be surprising after the national reaction to pressuring ABC/Disney to suspend late night comedian Jimmy Kimmel and an embarrassing Sept. 23 speech at the United Nations that can, at best, be described as unhinged.
Trump’s approval ratings are upside down with 54% of American voters disapproving, compared to 42% approving of what he’s doing in the White House.
“Trump’s approval ratings across a wide range of polls are both lower than his historical highs and low compared with many other post-World War II presidents,” according to writer Louis Jacobson at the award-winning Politifact journalism website. “An aggregation of polls by former FiveThirtyEight.com editor and Substack author G. Elliott Morris shows the most recent polling average for Trump is 41.9% approval and 54.2% disapproval.
“At the start of his second term, Trump was above water in the polling average, with an approval rating of 50.7% and a disapproval rating of 38.7%.”
That’s a 15-point swing in eight months. In an interview, analyst Jacobson observed that controversies generally don’t change the minds of Trump’s supporters or critics.
“(But) his low ratings on the economy would seem especially important. A lot of people voted for Trump in 2024 because of inflation and the economy, especially a lot of voters who didn’t have strong feelings otherwise.
“If he can’t improve his approval ratings, especially on the economy, it will complicate his party’s task heading into the midterms – because midterms are generally a referendum on the incumbent president and their party. The out-of-power party has usually gained in midterm elections, especially in the House.”
Scott Huffmon, the chief pollster for South Carolina’s Winthrop Poll, noted that Trump’s current support is under water across an array of issues.
“This [dropping] trend across multiple polls is driven by independents but they are always the hardest to turn out, especially in off-years,” Huffmon said. “He is still sky-high among Republicans nationally. Consistently mid-80s.”
But it’s unclear how long that will last, particularly if approval/disapproval numbers grow further apart as fresh polling that takes into account the impact of Kimmel, his flamboyant return and Trump’s U.N. speech that offended leaders across the world.
“Coalitions of discontent – the model that explained presidential approval until Bill Clinton – could definitely be building,” Huffmon said. “If the GOP can keep things focused on identity politics and ensure that marginal-news consumers feel a constant series of vaguely defined threats, they may win enough ‘lean Republican’ districts and keep a few tossups, then Dems might not be able to flip the House.”
But if Democrats are able to focus on economics, such as how Trump hasn’t decreased the price of groceries and how his tariffs are really bad for farmers and small businesses, they may be able to flip the House – just as they did in 2018 when they picked up 41 seats at the midpoint of Trump’s first term.
A new September poll shows 47% of Americans say they’ll vote for Democrats and 42% for Republicans on a generic ballot. The same poll of 1,500 people showed 60% believed the country was on the wrong track, compared to 28% of people who said it was on the right track. That’s a 3% increase in pessimism over the previous month.
Perhaps the best indicator of what the country’s really thinking will come on Oct. 18 when people see the number of Americans who protest Trump at hundreds of the scheduled No Kings rallies across the country. Millions are expected.
While there are a lot of political parallels between what’s happening now in Trump’s second term compared to the same time in his first term, protests and increasingly virulent anti-Trump sentiment across the country could make the 2026 midterm elections more volatile than ever before.
Andy Brack is editor and publisher of the Charleston City Paper and Statehouse Report. Have a comment? Send it to feedback@statehousereport.com.
