President Donald Trump's standing among active U.S. service members has weakened over the past year, a period that included the start of the Iran war, a Newsweek review of available military polling suggests. The most recent survey by Common Defense on October 19 found 49 percent of active service personnel disapprove of Trump compared to just 42 percent who approved, giving him a net approval rating of -7. However, five months before the start of the Iran war an August 2025 survey of 440 active-duty personnel commissioned by the same veteran-led advocacy group found Trump's net approval among active-duty personnel stood at +12, based on 53 percent approval and 41 percent disapproval.
The war began on February 28, when the U.S. and Israel launched major airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. At the time, Trump said the operation was intended to set back Iran's nuclear ambitions. Despite Trump negotiating a ceasefire which ran from April 8 to July 8, periodic clashes and heightened tensions have continued and tensions remain high over regional stability.
Active military personnel and veterans have historically been a crucial Republican-leaning voting bloc for President Trump. The 19-point decline coincides with the Iran War and broader debates over military policy, though the polling does not establish what drove the shift in opinion. Among active-duty members, 75 percent agreed that veterans and military families are being left behind, up from 65 percent in August 2025.
Peter Feaver, professor of political science at Duke University, told Newsweek: “The general pattern with military, veteran and military families is that they follow the swings in opinion that show up among civilians but they tend to skew conservative.” The author of Thanks For Your Service: The Causes and Consequences of Public Confidence in the US Military, said: “If the country moves to the right, the military adjacent blocks move right along with it. If the country moves to the left, the military adjacent blocks will move in that direction, too, but more slowly and not going so far. We should not be surprised if that is also showing up in sub-groups, to include military, military families and veterans.” A similar pattern to Trump was seen for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth who suffered a dip in support from active service personnel since last year.
Hegseth slipped in approval falling from net +6 on 47 percent approval and 41 percent disapproval in 2025 to net -16 in 2026 based on 38 percent approval and 54 percent disapproval, a net swing of -22. Jason Dempsey, executive director for the Center for Veteran Transition and Integration at Columbia University, said one of the more interesting findings was polling on the defense secretary, arguing that most service members typically pay little attention to the office. They're many levels removed from their day-to-day chain of command,' he said.
What's different here is that you have a defense secretary who sees himself much more as a hands-on military leader. It's much harder to connect presidential approval ratings or broader views about the direction of the country directly to military service, but this is one area where there is something distinctive worth examining." Opinion differs sharply among all the groups polled. Across all 731 respondents in the 2026 surveyed, 47 percent approved of Trump and 50 percent disapproved.
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