While President Trump imposes arbitrary tariffs on countries around the world and attempts to blackmail the Brazilian government into interfering in the judiciary and granting a pardon for former president Jair Bolsonaro, his domestic popularity has declined significantly. A recent Gallup poll indicates that Trump has the lowest approval rate of 37% of any president at this time in their first or second terms in office since 1961 during John F. Kennedy’s first six months in the White House.
Significantly, independent voters, who are neither Democrats nor Republicans, have turned their backs on the president.
According to an Atlas poll conducted between July 13 and 17, Trump’s overall approval rate of his job as president is currently 44.3%, plummeting from 50.1% in January. During the same period his disapproval has increased from 49.7% to 54.9%, a five-point jump. In a recent Gallup poll, 64% of independents declare that they have a negative opinion of Trump’s job performance.
This could mean a defeat in the 2026 mid-term elections when voters select all the members of the lower house of Congress and a third of all senators. Given the fact that the Republicans have a three-seat majority in the House and a four-seat majority in the Senate, it is possible that the lower body of the U.S. Congress could flip to the Democrats. The chances in the Senate are less likely given the seats that are in dispute. Nonetheless, this could mean that Trump’s radical right-wing agenda might be blocked or at least significantly slowed down during his last two years in office.
Polls are always a snapshot in time reflecting how a random sample of the population is reacting at a given moment. While one can note trends, the tumultuous way that Trump has governed means that almost anything could happen. Moreover, pollsters have had difficulty in capturing the sentiments of Trump’s supporters, underestimating their actual weight in election outcomes.
In this regard, it is difficult to predict what may occur over the next seventeen months. Still, Trump’s support seems to be slipping. As in many recent elections, independent or “swing voters” could determine the 2026 election outcomes either by moving toward Democratic candidates, or if disillusioned with Trump’s governance, deciding not to vote at all.
Questions posed about specific Trump policies in the Atlas poll reveal that in all issues other than national defense, the president’s support is declining. Significantly, when asked about immigration, which most political observers credit as one of the two main reasons for Trump’s victory, 54% of those interviewed disapprove of his policies.
During the electoral campaign, Trump whipped up a frenzy of xenophobic paranoia alleging that most of the estimated fifteen million undocumented immigrants living and working in the United States were violent criminals, rapists, or gang members. While these accusations were blatantly false, they struck a chord among many voters, who were fed an extremist discourse about massive hordes of brown and black skinned people from Latin America and the Caribbean who were allegedly “stealing” American jobs, receiving government social service benefits, and driving up crime statistics in urban areas.
The government’s anti-immigrant policy, impelled by Stephen Miller, Trump’s hard-right White House Deputy Chief of Staff, seeks to deport 3,000 undocumented workers a day, or one million over the course of a year. While these measures might please Trump’s loyal MAGA supporters, a recent CNN poll indicated that “59% of Americans oppose arresting and detaining undocumented immigrants who have resided in the United States for years with no criminal record.”
Moreover, Trump’s immigrant policies are likely to cause major damage to the economy. Undocumented immigrants work in heavy, labor-intensive, low-paying jobs that U.S. citizens refuse to do. From dishwashers, bus boys, and cooks in the nation’s restaurants to housekeepers in the hotel sector, the tourist industry could collapse if Trump’s deportation goals are met.
Although anecdotal evidence that backs this claim are inevitably partial and methodically questionable indicators, they, nevertheless can confirm this trend.
Loretta, a retired nurse and union activist, moved with her husband, Harold to the countryside several hours to the east of San Francisco where they bought several acres of land, built a house, and began raising poultry and cultivating a garden and orchard. Harold, a former building contractor, relied on undocumented workers in his business and in retirement, paying them livable wages in exchange for their hard work. “Before Trump was elected, labor was readably available both in Berkeley where I had a business and in this region. One only needed to go to the local Home Depot to find day laborers. They are no longer there. Even our neighbors who were Trump supporters complain about his immigrant policy, as it is hurting the local economy and causing a serious labor shortage.”
Loretta had a recent surprise when she attended a union conference in San Diego, California, held in an upscale hotel. “We wanted to have lunch in the hotel restaurant, but the management informed us that it was closed because they couldn’t find workers to serve customers. Undocumented immigrants are panicking, fearful that the masked and unidentified Immigration and Custom Enforcement [ICE] officers will raid their employment site, so they have abandoned their jobs, hoping that the wave of arrests will pass.”
For a brief moment in June, Trump seemed to change the policy of unrestricted arrests of undocumented workers in the service industry and agriculture. Commenting on social media, the president affirmed: “Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long-time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace.”
But, within days Trump reversed his new policy announcement. Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary in the Department of Homeland Security stated: “there will be no safe place for industries who harbor violent criminals or purposely try to undermine ICE’s efforts.” Once again, the administration conflated the millions of hard-working immigrants with the tiny minority involved in violent criminal behavior. Trump confirmed his own backtracking by announcing that “we are going to look everywhere,” foreboding economic havoc nationwide as Trump strips these essential low-paying workers from key sectors of the economy.
Lingering inflation was the second principal issue that motivated many voters to support Trump in 2024. During the Trump’s convention speech, he promised that “incomes will skyrocket, inflation will vanish completely, jobs will come roaring back, and the middle class will prosper like never, ever before.” In polling it remains the highest concern of voters. Currently, 55% of those questioned in the Atlas poll disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy.
Trump’s solution to this widespread worry has been an erratic and arbitrary tariff policy that most economists predict will only fuel inflation in the second half of 2025. Importers of agricultural products and manufactured goods are already increasing prices to cover their tariff assessments. If one adds to this the extra costs of producing and harvesting food because of a shortage of labor, consumers are likely to see a significant rise in prices.
The country faces other economic woes, as new government statistics indicate that unemployment is mounting. The independently run Bureau of Labor Statics, housed in the Department of Labor, announced on August 1 that job creation numbers were revised downward in May and June, and dropped sharply in July as employers hired significantly fewer workers. In a “kill the messenger” move, the negative news for the Trump administration prompted the president to fire the head of the Bureau claiming she had faked the numbers. Given Trump’s track record of only appointing high level administrators who are fiercely loyal to him, economists, entrepreneurs, investors, and others who rely on accurate statistics might lose confidence in the government’s future numbers, disrupting even more the economy.
On other key issues, large sectors of the population differ with Trump’s policies: 58% oppose both the dismantling of U.S. Aid for International Development and laying off large numbers of government workers; 59% object to his 25 percent tariffs on goods from Mexico; and 67% disagree with freezing funds for public health agencies. Dissent on other questions is even greater: 70% object to dismantling the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the same percentage are against renaming the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.” And in a Washington Post-Ipsos poll, a surprising 83% oppose the pardons of violent January 6 defendants who had invaded the Capitol to prevent Biden from taking office.
None of these polling statistics are definitive indicators of the electoral outcomes of November 2026. However, if Trump is unable to tackle growing inflation due in large part to his tariff and immigration policies, the Democrats have a change to win back the House of Representatives. In that case, even if the Senate remains in the hand of the Republicans, Trump’s supporters will be forced to compromise on budgetary legislation that originates in the House.
The Democrats will also be able to initiate Congressional investigations into all the measures carried out by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency that was set up to dismantle government programs. Congressional representatives will be able to force administration officials to testify before Congress. Moreover, they will have the power to investigate the myriad ways Trump has used his office to enrich himself through questionable business dealing with foreign interests and personal lawsuits again companies that have business transactions under review with the U.S. government.
As is the case with everything related to Trump, nothing is predictable. Still, poll numbers bode ominously for the current occupant of the White House.
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