President Donald Trump’s approval rating sits at 41.4 percent in the latest RealClear Polling average, against a disapproval of 56.6 percent — a net negative of 15.2 points. The figure is a slight uptick from the previous week’s 40.9 percent, but the overall trend since February has been downward.
Rasmussen’s daily tracking poll published Tuesday shows 43 percent approval and 55 percent disapproval among likely voters, with 46 percent strongly disapproving. That strong disapproval figure is the one that matters most politically, since intensity drives turnout and it is running heavily against the president.
Individual pollsters are spread across a wide range. Reuters/Ipsos has Trump at 36 percent, CNN at 38 percent, and CBS News at 39 percent. The more Republican-friendly surveys put him between 43 and 45 percent, while Fox News comes in at 41 percent. The nine-point gap between the most and least favourable polls reflects the structural difficulty in measuring Trump’s support accurately.
Nate Silver’s Silver Bulletin average is more pessimistic, tracking Trump’s net approval at negative 16.3, down from negative 13.4 when the Iran war began in late February. The average hit a second-term low of negative 17.5 just days ago before the ceasefire rally briefly lifted sentiment.
The economy is driving the damage. CNN’s April 1 poll found Trump’s economic approval at a career low of 31 percent, with two-thirds of Americans saying his policies have made conditions worse, the highest such reading of his entire presidency, including his first term. Approval on inflation is 27 percent, down from 44 percent a year ago.
The erosion inside his own party is the warning sign Republicans are watching most carefully heading into November. The share of Republicans who strongly approve of his job performance has dropped from 52 percent to 43 percent since January. Among Republicans under 45, economic disapproval is down 23 points over the same period.
Morning Consult’s issue-by-issue breakdown shows Trump underwater on ten of the twelve issues it tracks. National security is his only clear positive, at 50 percent approval against 43 percent disapproval. Immigration is barely above water at 48-46. The economy sits at 43-51. His worst numbers are on the national debt and social issues.
State-level data compounds the picture. Morning Consult found Trump’s approval is net positive in only 17 states, down from 22 at the end of 2025. Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska and Ohio, all states he carried in 2024, all flipped to net negative in a single quarter.
What Has Happened in the Last 24 Hours
On Tuesday, Iran formally rejected a US proposal to suspend all nuclear activity for 20 years, a senior administration official confirmed. The rejection removes the easiest diplomatic off-ramp and forces the administration to either escalate pressure or soften its demands before the two-week ceasefire expires on April 21.
Despite the rejection, a second round of talks appears to be taking shape. Trump told the New York Post on Tuesday that “something could be happening” in Pakistan within the next two days. The White House confirmed that future talks are “under discussion but nothing has been scheduled.” Pakistan has formally offered to host a second meeting in Islamabad.
At the State Department on Tuesday, a rare direct meeting took place between Israeli and Lebanese diplomats, the first such encounter in decades, brokered by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Both sides agreed to further negotiations at a mutually agreed time and venue, according to a State Department statement.
Trump also drew bipartisan religious backlash on Tuesday after deleting an AI-generated image posted Sunday night showing him in a white robe with his hand on a sick man, depicted in a style widely interpreted as Jesus-like. He posted the image 46 minutes after publicly attacking Pope Leo XIV as “WEAK on Crime” and “terrible for Foreign Policy” for the pope’s criticism of the Iran war.
After deleting the post Monday, Trump told reporters he thought it depicted him “as a doctor making people better.” He refused to apologise to the pope. “Pope Leo said things that are wrong,” he said. “There’s nothing to apologize for.”
The backlash crossed partisan and religious lines. Archbishop Paul Coakley, president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, called the remarks “disheartening.” Bishop Robert Barron said Trump owed the pope an apology. Former Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote on X that she “completely denounces” the post. Conservative commentator Megan Basham called it “OUTRAGEOUS blasphemy.” Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, one of Trump’s closest European allies, called his words toward the pope “unacceptable.”
At least eight members of Trump’s cabinet are Catholic, including Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Rubio. Vance downplayed the post on Fox News, saying Trump “was posting a joke” and that the president “likes to mix it up on social media.” Analysts at Fordham University’s Center on Religion and Culture described the episode as a potential watershed moment for Catholic voters, who were critical to Trump’s 2024 victory margin.
