Silver Bulletin

Silver Bulletin

How popular is Donald Trump?

Silver Bulletin approval ratings for President Trump — and all presidents since Truman.

Nate Silver's avatar
Eli McKown-Dawson's avatar
Nate Silver
and
Eli McKown-Dawson
Sep 06, 2025
∙ Paid
735
167
143
Share

🕒 The latest on Trump’s approval rating

Updated September 6, 2025

Donald Trump has gotten slightly less unpopular over the past couple weeks. Two weeks ago, Trump’s net approval rating was -8.3. Today, it’s up to -6.9. That movement is almost entirely a function of Trump’s disapproval rating. The share of Americans who approve of the job Trump is doing has increased by a whopping 0.2 percentage points since August 23rd. But the share who disapprove decreased by 1.1 points in the same period.

But let’s be clear, this still isn’t much movement. Trump’s net approval rating has fluctuated between -7 and -10 since early July. And he’s still more popular among registered and likely voters than he is among all U.S. adults. Here’s what his net approval rating looks like among those groups:

  • U.S. adults: -10.9

  • Registered and likely voters: -5.7

What will it take to see some real movement in Trump’s approval rating? It might come down to the economy. The labor market appears to be stalling based on the August jobs numbers. And as we’ve written before, a potential economic slowdown is one of the biggest threats to Trump’s political capital. -EMD, 9/06/25

See also: Elon Musk favorability rating dashboard.

This is the landing page for Silver Bulletin presidential approval ratings. It will always contain the latest data from our average of presidential approval polls and we’ll regularly update these approval ratings as new polls come in.1

Our polling average is the direct descendant of the presidential approval average that Nate designed for FiveThirtyEight. Click here for more information on how the average works. The Silver Bulletin average weights more reliable polls more heavily — you can find our latest pollster ratings here. It adjusts for house effects. And it accounts for uncertainty, estimating the range where new polls might come in.

The topline: So, just how popular is Trump?

Our default average reflects a combination of all polls, whether conducted among adults, registered voters or likely voters. If a pollster releases multiple versions of the same survey, we use the all-adult version of the poll before the registered voter version.2 This is because all Americans have a say in how popular the president is — whether or not they vote.

The polls: What do the surveys say?

Inevitably, there’s a lot of disagreement from survey to survey, not just because of statistical variation but because pollsters have long had trouble pegging down Trump’s popularity — and often underestimated it. So you can see all the numbers here and how house effects work in the model. You can also click here to download every Trump approval poll in our database — including some additional details not shown in the chart below.

Each poll gets an “influence” score based on its pollster rating, its sample size, its recency, and how often a pollster is publishing numbers.3 Sometimes, surveys with mediocre pollster ratings have more weight in the model just because they were conducted very recently or polled more people.

The issues: What do Americans think of Trump’s policies?

Pollsters don’t just ask about Trump’s overall job approval, they also ask about how well he’s dealing with different issues. We’re tracking how the public feels about Donald Trump’s handling of some of the most salient topics: the economy, immigration, trade and tariffs, and the cost of living.

The deep dive

We also have a few features we’re reserving for paying subscribers:

  • How do Trump’s approval ratings compare to every past president since Truman?

  • How many voters strongly approve or disapprove of Trump?

  • What are Trump’s numbers in only polls of adults or only polls of likely and registered voters?

You can find all of that, plus downloadable data on every president’s approval rating every day since 1945, down below.

This post is for paid subscribers

Already a paid subscriber? Sign in
© 2025 Nate Silver
Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start writingGet the app
Substack is the home for great culture