President Donald Trump won a second term in 2024 on four central pledges: seal the border, avoid new foreign wars, fix the economy and clean up Washington. Nineteen months into his term, polling shows him underwater on the four of them. Trump's overall net approval rating, the share who approve of his job performance minus the share who disapprove, stood at positive 11.6 points on his first full day back in office, January 21, 2025, according to the Silver Bulletin polling average maintained by statistician Nate Silver.
That was a far stronger opening number than in his first term, boosted by early positive ratings on immigration and the economy, the same two issues that would later drag him underwater. By August 20, that average had fallen to roughly negative 19.6 points, with 37.1 percent approving and 56.7 percent disapproving. Here is how each of the four issues has moved since Trump took office.
The decline since then has tracked a string of flashpoints. Polling averages point to the “Liberation Day” tariff rollout in April 2025, the Justice Department’s closure of the Jeffrey Epstein investigation that summer, the government shutdown, aggressive immigration enforcement tactics and the war Trump launched against Iran in the spring of 2026 as the main drivers. Immigration was the centerpiece of Trump's 2024 campaign.
At a rally in Aurora, Colorado, on October 11, 2024, he told supporters: "We will close the border. We will stop the invasion of illegals into our country. We will defend our territory.
We will not be conquered." He paired the line at nearly every stop with a promise to launch "the largest deportation operation in the history of the United States." Immigration is still Trump's best-rated issue, yet it has weakened substantially since he took office. The Silver Bulletin average put him at positive 7 points on immigration on January 21, 2025. He peaked near positive 11 points in early March 2025.
By August 20, 2026, his net approval on the issue had fallen to negative 11.2 points, according to the same average. Recent single polls tell a similar story. A Quinnipiac University poll of registered voters conducted July 23-27, 2026, found 40 percent approved of Trump's handling of immigration, while 57 percent disapproved.
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