President Donald Trump’s approval rating produced mixed signals this week, with multiple polls showing him underwater — even as one bucked the broader trend.
White House spokesperson Davis Ingle told Newsweek in an emailed statement earlier this week, “The ultimate poll was November 5, 2024, when nearly 80 million Americans overwhelmingly elected President Trump to deliver on his popular and commonsense agenda.”
Why It Matters
Presidential approval ratings often shape the political environment heading into midterm elections, influencing turnout, messaging and candidate recruitment in competitive races nationwide.
With Trump underwater nationally and in key battlegrounds, the polling suggests potential headwinds for Republicans as control of Congress comes into sharper focus.
Trouble in a Crucial Battleground State
Trump is running deeply underwater in Wisconsin, one of the nation’s most competitive swing states, according to a new poll.
A TechnoMetrica (TIPP) survey for the League of American Workers found 39 percent approval and 54 percent disapproval for Trump among registered voters in the state, leaving him with a net approval rating of –15.
Wisconsin has long been a political bellwether, and Trump’s standing there could shape both national narratives and campaign strategies as parties test messages on immigration, inflation and foreign policy.
The result also aligns with broader national trends.
The New York Times polling average—which aggregates recent, high‑quality surveys into a statistically adjusted snapshot—showed Trump at 41 percent approval and 56 percent disapproval nationwide at the time of writing on Friday.
The Wisconsin poll was conducted online from February 6 to 12, 2026, among 1,524 registered voters, with results weighted by gender, age, race, education and prior vote.
The credibility interval is plus or minus 2.7 percentage points, and TIPP notes that subgroup estimates carry wider uncertainty.
A New Second‑Term Low Emerges
Nationally, Trump’s approval rating has fallen to the lowest point of his second term, according to a new survey from the Public Polling Project conducted by Big Data Poll.
In the February 16 to 18 poll, 42.4 percent of registered voters approved of Trump’s job performance, while 54.6 percent disapproved, putting the president more than 12 points underwater nationwide.
The intensity of opposition has increased as well.
Some 43 percent of registered voters now say they strongly disapprove of Trump’s job performance—a share that exceeds the total percentage who say they approve of him at all—and across every policy issue tested, negative views outweighed positive ones.
The poll surveyed 2,012 registered voters and 1,805 likely voters nationwide, using a combination of online interviews and live‑agent phone methods, including peer‑to‑peer SMS and text‑to‑online outreach.
Samples were sourced from Lucid (CINT) and the L2 National Voter File Database, with results weighted by sex, age, race and ethnicity, education and geography.
The margin of error was plus or minus 2.1 percentage points for registered voters and plus or minus 2.3 points for likely voters, at the 95 percent confidence level.
The new low marks a sharp reversal from the start of Trump’s second term.
He entered office with a 55.5 percent approval rating and 37.4 percent disapproval, a position that held through the spring before eroding after May, when the administration shifted its focus toward foreign policy, including the bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites in support of Israel.
Although approval ticked up slightly toward the end of 2025, underlying sentiment remained negative.
The survey’s Intensity Index, which measures the strength of approval and disapproval, widened from -14.1 in December to -18.6 in January, indicating that opposition was consolidating rather than easing.
One Poll Bucks the Trend—With Caveats
One national survey has cut against the broader polling picture.
A new InsiderAdvantage poll, conducted between February 17-18 among 800 likely voters, utilizing mix-mode text/panel, with a margin of error of plus/minus 3.46 percent, found Trump with 50 percent approval and 46 percent disapproval, placing him narrowly above water and slightly ahead of his 2024 election victory margin.
The result stands apart from most other recent surveys.
But writing in the Silver Bulletin, polling analyst Eli McKown-Dawson has cautioned that individual polls can diverge because of differences in methodology, timing and sampling, even when the overall trend remains unchanged.
McKown‑Dawson said Trump’s net approval “ticked up slightly to -13.6” after hitting a “second-term low of -15.0,” largely because the InsiderAdvantage poll put Trump at “+4” net approval — the second such result from the firm in the past month.
He noted that those numbers are “meaningfully different” from most other pollsters, adding that while InsiderAdvantage has a “decent pollster rating (B+),” it has been “consistently bullish on Trump 2.0” compared with the average.
As a result, he said the poll illustrates why a “house effects adjustment” is applied, meaning the InsiderAdvantage result is treated as “Trump -4 instead of Trump +4” when it enters the overall average.
MAGA Base Is Still There
Trump continues to post overwhelming approval among his MAGA supporters, but recent polling suggests a modest softening at the margins.
In an Economist/YouGov survey conducted February 6 to 9 among 1,730 U.S. adult citizens, 95 percent of MAGA supporters approved of Trump’s job performance while 5 percent disapproved, producing a net approval rating of 90—a 4‑point decline from the prior week.
A follow‑up February 13 to 16 Economist/YouGov poll of 1,682 adult citizens again showed Trump dominating within the MAGA electorate, with 93 percent approval and 7 percent disapproval, for a net approval rating of 86.
Both polls were conducted using web‑based interviews drawn from YouGov’s opt‑in panel and weighted to reflect U.S. citizens by age, gender, race, education, region, voter registration status and past presidential vote.
The margin of error for each survey was plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, adjusted for weighting.
Nationally, however, Trump remains underwater.
The Economist tracker recently placed his net approval at –17, underscoring the gap between his standing with core supporters and the broader electorate.
What People Are Saying
White House spokesperson Davis Ingle told Newsweek in an emailed statement: “The ultimate poll was November 5, 2024, when nearly 80 million Americans overwhelmingly elected President Trump to deliver on his popular and commonsense agenda. The President has already made historic progress not only in America but around the world. It is not surprising that President Trump remains the most dominant figure in American politics.”
Trump wrote on Truth Social this month: “The highest Poll Numbers I have ever received. Obviously, people like a strong and powerful Country, with the best economy, EVER!”
Senior data journalist David Montgomery and director of survey data journalism Taylor Orth, writing for YouGov, said: “A majority of Americans disapprove of how Donald Trump is handling his overall job as president, and even more disapprove of how Trump is handling the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein. These negative views of Trump’s handling of his overall job and the Epstein investigation have changed little in recent weeks.”
