Trump's approval rating hits record lows in 2 new polls
Trump's approval rating hits record lows in 2 new polls
Fernando Cervantes Jr., USA TODAYThu, July 30, 2026 at 7:35 PM UTC
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President Donald Trump’s approval rating struggles continue, hitting new lows in two separate polls released July 29 and July 30.
A poll released by Quinnipiac University on July 29 showed Trump's approval rating at 32%, while 58% of respondents said they disapproved of the president's job performance. According to the pollster, Trump’s performance in the poll is the worst recorded in either of his terms in the White House.
Only a day after Quinnipiac’s poll, an AP-NORC poll showed similar numbers, as only 33% of respondents approved of Trump’s performance, a drop of 4 percentage points from the last AP-NORC poll. Trump’s approval rating in the July 30 AP-NORC poll is the lowest recorded by the pollster since his return to the White House in 2025.
Quinnipiac University’s poll was conducted from July 23 to July 27 with 963 responses and a margin of error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points. AP-NORC’s poll was also taken from July 23 to 27, but with 1,165 responses and a margin of error of plus or minus 3.7 percentage points.
A record breaker
This week has been historic for the president, but for all the wrong reasons.
Apart from reaching record lows in both Quinnipiac University and AP-NORC’s polls, the president has hit similar lows in two other surveys released earlier this week.
On July 28, a new Economist/YouGov poll found that 34% of Americans approved of Trump’s job performance, marking the president's lowest approval rating in YouGov’s tracking since he returned to the White House.
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In an emailed statement to USA TODAY on July 28, White House spokesman Davis Ingle dismissed the Economist/YouGov poll, saying "the ultimate poll was November 5th 2024 when nearly 80 million Americans overwhelmingly elected President Trump."
But, only a day later, a CNN/SSRS poll put Trump’s approval rating at 34%. That low mark matched his previous low at the end of his first term in office, in the immediate aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riots.
Iran remains an unpopular war
Both Quinnipiac University and AP-NORC polls found that the war on Iran has become a deeply unpopular issue.
In Quinnipiac’s poll, six in 10 voters said they oppose the war on Iran, the highest opposition the pollster has seen since the beginning of the war. Apart from opposing the war as a whole, a large majority of Americans, 74%, said they opposed sending U.S. ground troops into the Middle Eastern country.
AP-NORC’s poll had similar findings regarding the Iran war, as it found that 64% of Americans said the war on Iran has not been worthwhile. Among Democrats, 87% responded that the war has not been worth fighting, while 68% of Independents and 37% of Republicans said the same.
What do polling averages show?
While individual polls vary, major polling averages continue to show Trump in negative territory overall:
RealClearPolitics (July 30): 39.7% approve, 58.1% disapprove
New York Times (July 30): 38% approve, 59% disapprove
Silver Bulletin (July 30): 38.2% approve, 58.8% disapprove
USA TODAY’s Kinsey Crowley contributed to this report.
Fernando Cervantes Jr. is a trending news reporter for USA TODAY. Reach him at fernando.cervantes@usatodayco.com and follow him on X @fern_cerv_.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump's approval rating hits record lows in 2 new polls
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