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Updated on Oct 13, 2025
Updates weekly

Tracking Public Opinion of Trump's Washington

Trump’s approval rating dips as government shutdown continues

Morning Consult is tracking what voters across the country think about how President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress are governing the United States ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. Each week, we’ll update this page with fresh and timely data on all of the major questions facing Washington, including views about the people in charge, the issues dominating the conversation and what is actually breaking through to the electorate.

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Key Takeaways

  • Trump’s approval rating returns to 2025 low amid shutdown: With the federal government shut down since Oct. 1, Trump’s approval rating declined from 46% to 45% over the past week, tying a record low for his second term in office, while his disapproval rating ticked up from 52% to 53% over that time frame, tying a record high for the year. 

  • Shutdown remains the country’s biggest story: Roughly half of voters (49%) say they’ve seen, read or heard “a lot” about the shutdown. That’s a larger percentage than we measured for the Israel-Hamas cease-fire, which 35% of voters reported hearing a lot about, making it the week’s second-most salient story. The share of voters who say they’ve heard a lot about this shutdown is also higher than the 42% who said the same at a similar point of the prior shutdown, which began in late 2018 and ended in early 2019.

  • Congressional Democrats’ popularity ticks back up: Voters are 5 percentage points more likely to have an unfavorable than favorable view of Democrats in Congress, a 2-point improvement from last week that nonetheless leaves them less popular with Americans than they were for most of September. At 7 points underwater, Republicans in Congress remain slightly less popular with the U.S. electorate.

  • Schumer bests Johnson in popularity: For the first time this year, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has a lower net favorability rating among voters than Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). However, with respective net ratings of -5 points and -4 points, both leaders are underwater with the overall electorate.

  • Improving buzz on foreign affairs: The prospect of peace in the Middle East appears to be driving more favorable coverage about foreign affairs more generally. Voters are only 10 points more likely to report hearing something negative than positive about global matters and international affairs over the past week. That’s the best net buzz rating on that topic that we’ve clocked since early February.

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People

Trump's approval ratings

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Latest survey conducted Oct. 10-12, 2025, among registered U.S. voters.

  • 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.
  • At a similar point in Trump’s first term, 44% of voters approved and 51% disapproved of his job performance.

Politicians' popularity

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Latest survey conducted Oct. 10-12, 2025, among registered U.S. voters. Net favorability is the share of voters with favorable views minus the share with unfavorable views.

  • 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, has typically been the most unpopular one during this Congress.

Policy

Voters’ priorities for the Trump administration

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Latest survey conducted Oct. 10-12, 2025, among registered U.S. voters.

  • Voters are most likely to want Trump to focus on lowering prices for goods and services, health care and energy following a campaign that was dominated by voters’ concerns about inflation.
  • However, not nearly as many Americans see Trump placing those priorities at the top of his list.

Trump’s performance on the issues

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Latest survey conducted Oct. 10-12, 2025, among registered U.S. voters.

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

Congressional trust on the issues

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Latest survey conducted Oct. 10-12, 2025, among registered U.S. voters. Trust gap is the share of voters who trust congressional Republicans minus the share who trust congressional Democrats.

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

News

The buzz on the politicians

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Latest survey conducted Oct. 10-12, 2025, among registered U.S. voters. Net buzz is the share of voters who heard something positive minus the share who heard something negative.

  • Voters are 17 points more likely to say they’ve heard something negative about Trump than positive over the past week, his best rating in nearly a month.
  • Though Republicans in Congress enjoyed a narrow buzz advantage over congressional 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.

The buzz on the issues

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Latest survey conducted Oct. 10-12, 2025, among registered U.S. voters. Net buzz is the share of voters who heard something positive minus the share who heard something negative.

  • Voters are 27 points more likely to have heard something negative than positive about the economy, the worst net buzz rating since May.
  • 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.

How specific news items are resonating

Shares of voters who have seen, read or heard the following about …
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Latest survey conducted Oct. 10-12, 2025, among registered U.S. voters. Figures may not add up to 100% due to rounding.

Source of this data

Methodology

Morning Consult’s latest reported results reflect data gathered Oct. 10-12, 2025, among a nationally representative sample of 2,202 registered U.S. voters, with a margin of error of +/-2 percentage points.

The survey is conducted online. Respondents are collected via quota sampling based on age, gender, education and voter registration status. This weekly sample is weighted to approximate a target sample of registered voters based on age, gender, education, race and ethnicity, marital status, parental status, home ownership, geographic region and 2024 presidential vote choice. Morning Consult weighting targets are obtained using high-quality, up-to-date gold-standard government sources – including the Current Population Survey (CPS) and American Community Survey (ACS).

About Morning Consult

Morning Consult is a global decision intelligence company changing how modern leaders make smarter, faster, better decisions. The company pairs its proprietary high-frequency data with applied artificial intelligence to better inform decisions on what people think and how they will act. Learn more at morningconsult.com.

Email [email protected] to speak with a member of the Morning Consult team.

Eli Yokley
U.S. Politics Analyst

Eli Yokley is Morning Consult’s U.S. politics analyst. Eli joined Morning Consult in 2016 from Roll Call, where he reported on House and Senate campaigns after five years of covering state-level politics in the Show Me State while studying at the University of Missouri in Columbia, including contributions to The New York Times, Politico and The Daily Beast. Follow him on X/Twitter and on LinkedIn @eyokley. Interested in connecting with Eli to discuss his analysis or for a media engagement or speaking opportunity? Email [email protected].

Cameron Easley
Head of Political and Economic Analysis

Cameron Easley is Morning Consult’s head of political and economic analysis. He has led Morning Consult's coverage of politics and elections since 2016, and his work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Politico, Axios, FiveThirtyEight and on Fox News, CNN and MSNBC. Cameron joined Morning Consult from Roll Call, where he was managing editor. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Follow him on Twitter @cameron_easley. Interested in connecting with Cameron to discuss his analysis or for a media engagement or speaking opportunity? Email [email protected].