Judging from the media, you could be forgiven if you thought President Donald Trump’s job approval ratings are in a free fall. Not only are they actually on the rise, but the major polling averages underestimate his true standing with voters.
That’s because Trump currently suffers from the largest gap in at least over a decade between approval ratings as measured by polls of all adults as opposed to those surveying registered or likely voters.
According to major polling averages, Trump’s job approval rating is in the mid-40s. That ranges from 46.3% on the RealClearPolitics average to 42.1% in G. Elliott Morris’ tally. Other notable averages from Nate Silver’s Silver Bulletin and the New York Times place Trump’s approval around the 44% level.
None of these figures is great, although they are all much higher than Trump’s standing at a similar point in his first term. But all likely are off the mark because they include polls of adults as well as polls only of voters.
Take the RealClearPolitics average, which is Trump’s best. It currently includes 12 polls, 10 of which only sample registered or likely voters. Averaging those 10 together yields a 47.4% job approval rating, over one point higher than the combined average.
That’s because Trump’s standing in polls sampling all adults is abysmal. The two adult-based polls in the RCP average give him only a 40% (Reuters/Ipsos) or 42% (CBS News) job approval. The adult-based average of 41% is more than 6 points lower than his showing in the registered or likely voter samples.
This trend has persisted for a while. Slightly older polls of adults that have been dropped from the RealClearPolitics average show Trump’s approval rating as low as 37% (Gallup). All recent adult-based polls have him below the 47.4 % mark that the registered or likely voter polls give him.
This pattern is not normal. Former President Joe Biden’s polls of adults for July 2021 gave him a 51.3% approval, not much below the 52.5% mark the registered or likely voter polls gave him. Former President Barack Obama’s July 2013 polls showed a higher overall job approval of 45.5% in polls of adults than in polls of registered or likely voters (44.7%).
Even Trump’s first-term polls fail to match the current gap. Polls from July 2017 show him with a 36.3% approval rating in polls sampling all adults compared with a 39.2% showing in registered or likely voter polls.
It’s hard to know why this gap exists, but polling crosstabs give us a clue. Trump’s approval ratings among Republicans are statistically similar in recent polls of adults and registered or likely voters, but they are much lower with Independents and Democrats. His ratings are also notably lower among Hispanics in adult-based samples than registered or likely voter-based samples.
This suggests that Trump’s approval ratings are being artificially driven down by noncitizens, who are presumably angry about his immigration policies. Such views are politically irrelevant, however, because noncitizens do not vote.
As a result, politically savvy observers should start to factor this into their analyses.
The 1-point difference between Trump’s overall approval rating and his registered or likely voter rating may appear inconsequential, but that’s not true. People who approve of a president’s performance historically give that person’s party’s congressional candidates a net 90 margin in the midterm election.
The difference between 46% and 47% signifies a nearly 2-point shift in the GOP’s favor.
We see this pattern operating already in the generic congressional ballot polling averages. Democrats lead by 2.9 points in the RealClearPolitics generic ballot average, which is partly driven by an 8-point Democratic lead in the only adult-based sample included in the average.
Remove that poll, and the Democrats’ lead shrinks to 2.2 points.
One should also note that Trump’s registered or likely voter approval rating is a point higher than his favorability rating in last year’s network-pooled exit poll. Republicans won the House popular vote then; there’s no particular reason to think they cannot win it again in 2026 if Trump’s approval rating remains in the 47% to 48% range.
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Republicans are in a dogfight to retain House control, no matter what, and history strongly suggests they will lose it. However, their odds will go up a lot if Trump’s job approval rating remains only a bit lower than 50%.
A careful reading of the polls shows that this is likelier to be the case than the simple headline numbers imply. If that pattern persists, the pundit community might again be liable to tilt in the wrong direction come Election Day.
Henry Olsen is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a veteran political analyst. He hosts Beyond the Polls, a podcast about American elections and campaigns.