Trump Approval Rating Hits New Second Term Low Following Alex Pretti Shooting

Often, when you’re observing President Donald Trump, you’ll note the fact that he seems oblivious to how his statements or actions could erode his public support–he frequently seems genuinely shocked or disappointed to realize just how roundly hated he is by a majority of Americans, which is perhaps a symptom of the bubble of affluence and privilege he grew up in. Occasionally, however, the impending negative consequences of a news cycle are so blindingly obvious to everyone in the administration that even Trump becomes aware that some scary numbers are about to come hurtling his way.

And I can only imagine that he began to feel that way within a few hours of learning that Alex Pretti, an American citizen, ICU nurse and all around seemingly wonderful human being, had been executed in the streets of Minneapolis by trigger happy federal agents of Border Patrol and ICE. You could certainly feel the President’s jumpiness over the weekend, as he waffled about supporting the Border Patrol agents who killed Pretti, the immediate designation by DHS of the victim as a “domestic terrorist,” and the intensely negative response from even GOP members of Congress. Border Patrol “Commander at Large” Gregory Bovino even kinda-sorta lost his job? And now we’re starting to see the hard data backing up Trump’s jumpiness, as the first wave of approval polling conducted during the weekend sees Trump’s overall approval rating falling to a new second term low.

ABC: Noem said Pretti committed an act of domestic terrorism. Stephen Miller labeled him a domestic terrorist. Does the president agree?

LEAVITT: I have not heard the president characterize Mr Pretti in that way

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) Jan 26, 2026 at 1:34 PM

There have been a handful of new polls, with the usual variance in results, putting Trump’s overall approval at anywhere from 41% (Echelon Insights), to 39% (YouGov), to 38% (Ipsos). Together, they managed to push Trump’s approval aggregate via Nate Silver’s model (which also includes right-leaning pollsters such as Rasmussen Reports) down to 40.9%, which is the first time in the second term that it’s been below 41%. I think it’s fair to assume that this is just the tip of the iceberg, as most of these polls were still conducted at least partially before the tumultuous weekend that included Pretti’s killing in Minnesota, or the news cycle that has followed. All told, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the full, oncoming wave of polling push Trump’s aggregated approval down into the 30’s for the first time in this second term, and that is pretty rarefied air–Presidents who are rocking approval numbers that low are typically putting their parties in “wave election” territory when elections come around, like the steadily creeping midterm elections this November. Trump, like us, is no doubt wondering: How low can it go?

Naturally, being Donald Trump, his first instinct was to hop on Truth Social and begin ranting about how polling as a general idea is fake, un-American and possibly treasonous, insisting that “Fake and Fraudulent Polling should be, virtually, a criminal offense.” What does “virtually” mean in this sentence, you might wonder? Who among us could say? But the purpose is obvious: Attempt to get out ahead of the latest negative polling headlines and assure the base that none of the numbers are real.

In his second, ongoing term, Trump managed to spend all of … 10 days? … with an aggregated approval rating above 50% after being sworn in on Jan. 21, 2025. By the end of January, it had slipped below 50%, and it’s been a slow, steady downward motion in most of the year since then, with occasional spikes. The previous low before today came in November amid deadly boat strikes in the Caribbean that killed at least 126 people in the build-up to the U.S. invasion of Venezuela. You can attribute the slide to countless individual topics, from continued inflation and the unsteady economy, to the weakening U.S. dollar, spiking healthcare costs, warmongering attitudes toward territories like Greenland, or the threats to American civil liberties. Really, take your pick among all the worst things that the Trump administration managed to do during its first year back in power.

New Reuters/Ipsos poll

U.S. approval on Trump's handling of immigration has slid from +7 to -14 in one year.

www.reuters.com/data/trumps-…

(conducted Jan. 23-25)

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— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur.bsky.social) Jan 27, 2026 at 10:18 AM

If the aggregated approval rating does get below 40%, that will be territory that Trump only occupied in relatively short periods during his chaotic first term in 2017-2021. Even immediately in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection, the lowest his aggregated approval rating got was 39.3% approval, if you can believe that. You’d probably assume that had to be the lowest overall point of his first term, but you’d be wrong there as well: His lowest points actually came during the middle of 2017, when approval hovered in the 37-40% range for a few months. It actually crept back up afterward and was around 44% at the time of the 2018 midterm elections, which were still a crushing Republican defeat. If he finds himself somewhere below 40% in this November? Well, “blue wave” might not even begin to characterize it. Keep an eye on the widening gap in the Democrat-favoring generic Congressional ballot to see how the midterms could ultimately reshape Congress.

“The Trump Administration is operating as though their victory over Biden/Harris furnished them with a policy mandate to crack down on immigration, and they’re learning the hard way that the public wasn’t actually okay with what that sort of crackdown would entail,” said D. Stephen Voss, a political science professor at the University of Kentucky, to Newsweek.

That sentiment now seems like a distinct understatement. All that remains to be seen is how low Trump’s approval floor truly is.