</div>

As US President Donald Trump enters the second year of his second term, polls suggest his domestic popularity is in decline. Various surveys of US public opinion have found that the public disapproves of his handling of key domestic challenges and some of his flagship policies lack support.  

The extraordinary operation to seize Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife on 3 January is likely to dominate short-term reactions to Trump’s presidency at the beginning of the new year. But it is too early to say how it will affect his popularity in the long run. 

Trump had positioned himself as an anti-war ‘president of peace’, and December polling before the operation indicated most Americans opposed US military action in Venezuela. However, some previous US presidents, such as George W Bush, enjoyed significant short-term boosts from foreign military interventions. 

The long-term impact may depend on how things play out in Venezuela. Initial signs are that the Venezuela operation is unlikely to undo the firm partisan split in how Trump’s presidency is received. It is also unlikely to affect a fundamental decline in support among independent voters, whose main concern remains the US economy.

Declining popularity

Since convincingly winning the 2024 presidential election with 49.8 per cent of the popular vote and a majority of the Electoral College, Trump’s popularity has steadily declined. By Inauguration Day on 20 January 2025, his approval had slipped to 47 per cent. By the most recent Gallup poll in December, it stood at 36 per cent.  

Trump had a similar approval rating (37 per cent) almost a year into his first term, which was the lowest of any post-war president at that point. Among the presidents to serve two terms since World War II, only Richard Nixon had a lower approval (29 per cent) at the end of his fifth year in office. Trump claimed in a Truth Social post on 31 December that the polls are ‘rigged’ and his ‘real’ approval rating is 64 per cent, without providing any evidence.

Approval ratings give a rough measure of a president’s popularity that can be driven by many disparate judgements. 

For many people, the numbers reflect the deeply partisan nature of American politics today. In January, 91 per cent of Republicans approved of the way Trump was handling his job as president, but only 6 per cent of Democrats agreed – an 85-percentage point partisan divide. By the end of the year, that split stood at 86 points. But, significantly for Trump’s overall approval, his backing by self-identified independents (more than a third of the electorate) fell 21 percentage points over the course of the year.

Economy, trade, immigration

Alongside the decline in general approval ratings, polls about individual policies suggest the public is increasingly critical of Trump’s handling of both their priorities and his signature initiatives. 

The economy is consistently the highest priority for a majority of Americans. In an end-of-year address, Trump sought to blame his predecessor, President Joe Biden, for high inflation and low wages. He said that ‘inflation has stopped, wages are up, prices are down’ and argued that the US is now ‘poised for an economic boom the likes of which the world has never seen.’ 

But in December 2025, NPR polling found that about half the American public thought the US was in a recession (in fact, the US economy grew by 4.3 per cent in Q3). A similar share of those surveyed by YouGov in the same month thought that the economy was getting worse. A Harris poll conducted for the Guardian found that 45 per cent of Americans said their financial security was getting worse.

Another December poll found that just 31 per cent approved of Trump’s handling of the economy – his second term low – with prices being the public’s top economic concern. And a Fox News survey in November found that about twice as many voters said Trump, rather than Biden, was more responsible for the current economic conditions.