Occasionally you see a single poll that really casts light on important political topics. I wrote about an especially good one from Pew at New York:
For months now, Donald Trump’s job-approval numbers have been underwater, albeit relatively stable thanks to steady support from his base, which hasn’t been affected much by perceptions that he’s on an authoritarian bender. But a new and very deep dive from Pew Research Center shows that beneath the surface, the 47th president is losing a lot of ground among the voter groups that fed his 2024 win by trending in his direction.
The statistic that jumps right off the page is that Trump’s job-approval rating among Hispanics has dropped to 27 percent positive and 70 percent negative, with 51 percent expressing very strong disapproval. This rapidly increasing voter category probably had more to do with Trump returning to the White House than any other. According to Pew’s own earlier study of validated 2024 voters, Trump won 48 percent of Hispanic voters as compared to the 36 percent he won in 2020. That over half of Hispanics now very strongly disapprove of how Trump is doing his job is not a good sign for Republicans. Trump is also nearly as unpopular now with Asian Americans, registering a 31 percent approval and 66 percent disapproval ratio (with 49 percent very strongly disapproving). He won 40 percent of Asian Americans in 2024, per Pew, compared to the 30 percent he won in 2020.
Trump’s drop-off in support isn’t quite as dramatic among one other group that got a lot of attention after November 2024, young voters, in part because Pew’s analysis on 2024 voters didn’t show Trump doing quite so well as some others did (per Pew, he won 39 percent of under-30 voters, and now his approval rating in that category is at 33 percent). But a separate metric on 2024 Trump voters separated by age shows his job-approval rating ranges from a high of 92 percent among those over 65 to a low of 69 percent among those age 18 to 34. Of these younger Trump voters, 92 percent gave him a positive job rating as recently as February of this year.
All in all, the Trump coalition appears to be melting back toward the hard-core GOP base of grumpy old white folks. The disillusionment of significant numbers of 2024 Trump voters has several apparent sources. The best known involve the priorities he has set in his second term as president. Like most other pollsters, Pew finds Trump’s approval underwater on a long list of issues. They discern at least some confidence in Trump’s leadership on a few issues (e.g., negotiating favorable trade agreements and using military force wisely) and little at all in others (e.g., making good decisions on health-care policy and “bringing the country together”). Assessments of his One Big Beautiful Bill Act remain a bit in flux (23 percent of Americans, and the same percentage of Republicans, are “not sure” how they feel about it), but the percentage strongly disapproving of the megabill (33 percent) is a lot bigger than the percentage strongly approving (11 percent). Another Trump “accomplishment” Pew looked at closely was his tariff program, which remains very unpopular, with 61 percent of Americans and 32 percent of Republicans disapproving.
Most interesting, however, is Pew’s assessment of changing attitudes toward some of Trump’s personal qualities. The percentage of Americans who believe Trump is “mentally sharp” has dropped from 58 percent in July of 2024 to 48 percent a year later. The percentage saying he “keeps his promises” has dropped from 51 percent to 43 percent. Perhaps Teflon Don is not quite as impervious to perceptions that he is incoherent and erratic as we have been led to assume. And if he’s losing steam personally, it’s unclear why his party (or his potential successors) can be expected to do better in 2026 and 2028.
