Nate Silver has been tracking Donald Trump’s approval rating since the start of his second term, and one thing about the trend stands out to him. It just keeps going down.
“Kind of striking how persistent the decline in Trump’s approval rating has been,” Silver wrote on X on Saturday.
“There’s been mean reversion around news events and economic data, but to a declining rather than steady baseline as in the 1st term,” he added.
Put simply, Trump’s numbers still bounce up and down with the news. But each time they settle, they settle a little lower than before.
Silver attached a chart from his Silver Bulletin polling average showing Trump’s net approval rating over the past 21 months. Trump started his second term with a net approval of about plus 12. By the spring of 2025 he was underwater, and the line has drifted downward almost without a break ever since.
As of Saturday, his net approval sits at minus 23.9, the lowest point on the chart.
During his first term, Trump’s approval was famously stable. It stayed in a narrow band no matter what happened. This time, it’s on a steady slide.
The decline comes three weeks before the midterms. The New Republic’s Greg Sargent told Public Notice on Saturday that Trump’s collapse with independents is “a big, undercovered story.” He pointed to a New York Times poll showing 68 percent of independents disapprove of the president.
“This is the center of the electorate completely turning on Trump,” Sargent said.