People

• Trump began his second term by matching a record-high 52% approval from March 2017. But voters soured on his job performance during the most disruptive part of his trade war, and he’s yet to return to a net positive approval rating.
• Even so, at a similar point in Trump’s first term, 42% of voters approved and 55% disapproved of his job performance, leaving his net approval rating better now than it was around this time eight years ago.

• Trump’s favorability ratings remain underwater, which has been the case more often than not since he took office.
• Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) still face relatively low awareness from the electorate, though awareness about the top House Democrat improved a bit following his pushback against Trump’s legislative agenda.
• Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the most high-profile congressional  leader, is also the most unpopular one, though he’s maintained decent numbers at home in New York.

Policy

• Voters are most likely to want Trump to focus on lowering prices for goods and services, and specifically health care affordability, following a campaign that was dominated by voters’ concerns about inflation.
• As Trump works to reach a deal to end the Russia-Ukraine war, just 36% say he is making countering Russia and China a top priority, nearing a record low in his second term.

• In terms of his handling of specific policy areas, the president receives his best approval ratings on national security (50%) and immigration (49%).
• His highest disapproval ratings from voters come on health care (49%), Medicare and Social Security and the economy (48% each).

• Republicans hold sizable advantages over Democrats on trust to handle immigration and national security.
• Voters are significantly more likely to trust Democrats to handle LGBTQ+ rights, abortion, Medicare and Social Security and health care. 
• Voters are closely divided over whom they trust to handle the economy, trade, the national debt, energy, foreign policy and taxes.

News

• Voters are 14 points more likely to say they’ve heard something negative about Trump than positive, up from a second-term low of 24 points reached in June.
• Though Republicans enjoyed a narrow buzz advantage over Democrats between the November elections and the opening months of the second Trump presidency, the inverse has been true more often than not since late March.

• Voters are 18 points more likely to have heard something negative than positive about the economy, improving a bit from last week when we measured the worst net buzz rating on the topic since June.
• As was the case throughout much of the 2024 campaign, immigration has been one of the most salient issues voters are hearing about in the news, with roughly 7 in 10 saying they'd heard something recently about it in our latest survey.

• More than 2 in 5 voters (44%) said they had seen, read or heard “a lot” about Trump deploying National Guard and federal law enforcement officials to patrol Washington, D.C., including 48% of Democrats and 42% of Republicans. That, along with the Putin summit, appears to have drowned out news about inflation: 17% heard a lot about U.S. annual inflation hitting 2.7% in July, along with 16% who said the same of U.S. annual wholesale prices rising at their fastest pace since June 2022.
• Just over 1 in 5 voters (22%) said they had heard “a lot” about Trump’s firing of Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer following the release of the July 2025 jobs report. That’s just slightly higher than the share of the electorate who reported hearing a similar amount about the upcoming release of Taylor Swift's new album, “The Life of a Showgirl.”