World / Americas

At 31 percent, Trump's approval has never been lower

A Reuters/Ipsos poll that closed on Monday puts the president at the lowest approval of either term, with gasoline prices doing the damage and a 12 point Democratic lead on the generic ballot, fourteen days before the midterms.

Washington, United States · October 20, 2026

Fourteen days before Americans decide who runs Congress, the president's numbers have fallen through a floor he had already set twice. The Reuters/Ipsos poll that closed on Monday puts Donald Trump's approval at 31 percent, down a point from two weeks earlier and the lowest reading of either of his presidencies. Presidents have recovered from low numbers before. They do not usually do it in a fortnight, and they do not do it while their party is asking those same voters for control of the legislature.

The driver is not a scandal or a single vote. It is the price of fuel. Reuters reports that voters' worry about high gasoline prices sits at the top of the slide, and its polling earlier this month traced the souring to inflation set off by Trump's war with Iran. That is the cost of living argument being made against a president who campaigned on ending it, and it is landing in the places his coalition can least afford. Hispanic voters gave Trump nearly half their votes in 2024, a result that redrew the electoral map. Their approval of him now stands at 24 percent, the lowest of either term, and only 26 percent of Hispanic registered voters plan to vote Republican in November, against 52 percent for Democrats.

The congressional numbers in the same poll are worse than the personal ones. Asked the generic ballot question, which party would you vote for if the election were held today, 47 percent of registered voters chose Democrats and 35 percent chose Republicans. The 12 point gap is the widest Reuters/Ipsos has recorded this cycle. That lines up with what our midterm markets analysis found last week from the other direction: prediction traders pricing Democrats at about 90 percent to take the House. Pollsters and gamblers rarely agree this completely this close to an election. When they do, the remaining question is usually the size of the result, not its direction.

None of this is a result, and the honest caveats belong in the story. The poll surveyed 1,679 adults, including 1,279 registered voters, with a margin of error of 2 points overall and 3 points among registered voters. A generic ballot is a national mood reading, not a map: control of the Senate is decided state by state, where Republicans hold structural advantages that a national number cannot see. A late swing in gas prices, or a bad week for the other side, can still move a close race in a single district.

But a president at 31 percent is not a district level problem. He is the weather every Republican candidate now campaigns in, and the last two weeks of a midterm are when undecided voters stop judging the challenger and start judging the incumbent's party. Losing either chamber would complicate everything Trump wants from his final two years: the investigations, the subpoenas and the budget fights all change hands with a single gavel. The voters Reuters spoke to are not predicting that outcome. They are scheduling it.