Trump Approval Falls to 33% as Midterms Near

33. Out of every 100 respondents, just 33 said they approved of President Donald Trump's performance, the number that now defines his standing roughly three months before the November midterms. It is the kind of number that leaves little room for spin, and it arrived wrapped in two heavier pressures: a war with Iran that most Americans expect to drag on, and gasoline prices climbing back into daily conversation. ²⁶⁷⁹

The other side of that same finding is 64% disapproval. ⁹⁴ Thirty-three percent approval against 64% disapproval is not a narrow gap or a partisan blip. It is a nearly two-to-one negative ratio, and it is why the poll drew immediate attention as a midterm warning sign rather than a routine fluctuation. The Reuters/Ipsos national poll behind those numbers was published around August 17, 2026. ²⁶⁷⁹

The timing matters. Fieldwork ran August 14-17, according to Newsweek's account of the poll of record. ⁴ Reuters published it on August 17. ² WMAL and The Washington Times described it as released Tuesday, which would be August 18. ⁹ The sources disagree by a day on publication versus release, a small but telling reminder that even basic calendar details can vary between outlets handling the same survey.

How low is 33%? Here the sources also disagree, and the disagreement should not be smoothed over. Reuters, Gulf News, IBTimes, WMAL and others describe it as the lowest of his presidency. ²⁶⁷⁹ Newsweek says it ties his all-time low. ⁴ Forbes says it ties his first-term Reuters/Ipsos low while setting a second-term record. ⁵ Fox News called it a record low overall. ³ That is not a referee's distinction without a difference in a midterm year, when record and tie carry different political weight.

What is clearer is the short-term direction. The rating dropped about 2 points from about 35% two weeks earlier. ⁹⁵ That two-point move is modest on its own, but it pushed Trump from an already weak position into the contested territory of lowest or tied-lowest, which explains why a small shift produced outsized headlines.

If approval is the headline, the Iran war is the context that makes it legible. Four out of five respondents, or 80%, expected U.S. involvement in the Iran war to be prolonged or extended. ³⁵⁶⁷ That expectation cuts across the usual assumption that a short, decisive operation might be politically costless. When four in five voters assume duration, they are also assuming cost, disruption and follow-on decisions.

Gasoline is where that distant war meets daily life. Gas prices have jumped from $3 to over $4 per gallon since the Iran war began, according to Fox News's account of the pressures around the poll. ³ Seoul Economic Daily reports U.S. gasoline prices rose 30% from a year earlier. ¹⁰ The two descriptions use different baselines, one tied to the start of the war and one tied to the prior year, so they should be read as parallel signals rather than a single agreed measure. Together, they point in the same direction: fuel costs rising fast enough to be felt by voters already braced for a long conflict.

The economic damage appears broader than pump prices. Voters have shifted on which party they trust on the economy, with Democrats leading on economic policy for the first time in a decade. ¹⁰ Republicans have lost ground on the economy and immigration. ⁷ For a Republican White House that has long treated the economy, and to a lesser extent immigration and national security, as relative strengths, that reversal matters more than any single approval data point because it suggests the problem is comparative, not just personal to Trump.

The midterm implication is direct. Seoul Economic Daily says Democrats are favored to sweep Congress, with Polymarket putting a Democratic sweep at 47%. ¹⁰ That is a prediction-market probability, not a vote forecast, and 47% is not a majority expectation. But in a cycle where control of Congress is at stake, even a below-even sweep probability attached to a 33% presidential approval rating will concentrate minds in both parties.

Equally important is what the provided sources do not confirm. The claim that approval fell from 47% at the start of the term, a 14-point slide, is not confirmed in the provided sources, which document only the recent two-point fall from about 35%. ⁵⁹ The claim that 71% of Republicans expect a prolonged conflict provides a specific partisan breakdown that no provided source supplies. ³⁵⁶⁷ The claim that Democrats lead the generic congressional ballot by five points is also not stated in any provided source. ¹⁰ Sample size, margin of error, fieldwork weighting and detailed demographic breakdowns have not been disclosed in the visible material, and how these numbers compare with other national surveys remains unclear.

That combination is why this poll will be read in Washington as more than a low-water mark. A president at 33% with three months to the midterms, with 80% of the public braced for an extended war and fuel up sharply, does not have the luxury of treating approval as a communications problem. ²⁶⁷⁹³⁵ Whether the slide proves durable, and whether economic trust and congressional forecasts move with it, are the immediate stakes still to be tested in the next round of surveys and, ultimately, in November itself.