President Donald Trump’s approval rating has fallen to its lowest point of his second term, with a New York Times/Siena poll of 1,507 registered voters released Monday finding that only 37% of Americans approve of his overall performance, a four percentage point drop from the same poll conducted in January 2026.
The decline breaches a threshold that the pollsters described as symbolically significant: in the last 17 years, no president has fallen below the 38% approval mark for longer than a few days in this particular poll, placing Trump’s current standing in historically weak territory.
The Iran war is the primary drag on the president’s numbers.
Nearly two-thirds of voters, 63%, say that going to war with Iran was the wrong decision, including 73% of independents, a group whose support the Republican Party will need to retain control of the House in November 2026.
Sixty-five percent of voters disapprove of how Trump has handled the Iran conflict specifically, and fewer than a quarter say the war has been worth its $29 billion cost, with 50% believing the campaign will ultimately be unsuccessful at eliminating Iran’s nuclear programme.
Seven in ten Republicans still support the decision to go to war, providing the president with a solid base but insufficient insulation against broader public disapproval heading into a midterm cycle where independent voters will be decisive.
On the economy, the numbers are equally bleak: 64% of voters disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy, and 69% disapprove of his management of cost-of-living issues specifically, a particularly painful finding given that affordability was the central promise of his 2024 campaign.
Fifty-nine percent of Americans say that higher gas prices driven by Middle East supply disruptions have caused them financial hardship, up eight percentage points from April, and 35% say Democrats have a better approach to the economy compared to 31% who give Republicans the edge on that question.
Democrats are not emerging from the poll as clear beneficiaries, however.
Forty-four percent of Democratic voters say they are not satisfied with their party, while just 26% are satisfied, a level of internal dissatisfaction that mutes any straightforward electoral interpretation of Trump’s declining numbers.
The Times poll found that 50% of voters say they would vote for the Democratic candidate in their congressional district if an election occurred today, up from the last comparable reading, a finding that could signal a shift in the House map but that pollsters cautioned may not translate directly into November outcomes given the structural advantages Republicans hold in many districts.
The White House pushed back on the poll’s implications, with spokesman Davis Ingle saying that President Trump does not make national security decisions based on fluid opinion polls but on the best interest of the American people.
Republicans in Congress are watching the numbers with growing concern. Three Republican senators broke with their party last week to vote for a War Powers Resolution that would limit Trump’s ability to continue military action against Iran without congressional authorisation, the clearest sign yet that the war is becoming a political liability within the president’s own coalition.
