Donald Trump’s approval rating fell to 36% in this week’s Economist/YouGov poll, while 58% said they disapproved of the job he is doing. That left the president with a net approval of minus 22, a level he has now held for three straight weeks.
The latest reading extends a stretch of weak numbers that has lasted for two months, with Trump stuck below 40% approval throughout that period. It also puts him in the same neighborhood as the worst poll numbers of Joe Biden’s presidency, after Biden exited the race in mid-2024. The lowest three-week average for Biden was minus 21.8, while polling average has Trump at minus 20 and Nate Silver’s average puts him at minus 19.6.
The weight behind those numbers is not just political. April’s consumer price index showed prices rising faster than wages for the first time in three years, and the producer price index is up 6% over the past year. The monthly producer price reading rose 1.4%, the biggest jump in more than four years. Voter anger over inflation had already lingered even after the inflation rate came down in 2023, and Trump has been hit as well by tariffs and the war with Iran.
That is the tension in the moment: the economy is no longer described by the same inflation surge that dominated the Biden years, but the cost squeeze has not gone away, and the public is still judging the White House through that lens. David Montgomery, a veteran analyst, captured the pattern by noting that in the past, bad numbers one week often were offset by less-bad numbers in the next poll. That has not happened here. Instead, the decline has stayed in place long enough to look structural rather than accidental.
For Trump, the question is no longer whether one bad poll will pass. The harder truth is that the bad numbers have settled in, and they are now tracking the same pocketbook pain that is keeping prices ahead of wages.
