How popular is Donald Trump?
Silver Bulletin approval ratings for President Trump — and all presidents since Truman.
🕒 The latest on Trump’s approval rating
Updated January 6, 2026
The big news this week is the US raid/strike/attack/operation against Venezuela, where we captured President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. Nate has a longer take on whether Venezuela will be a political liability for Trump in this month’s SBSQ, but we’ll have to wait before any backlash materializes (or fails to materialize) in the approval polls.
Trump’s approval rating has been relatively stable over the past few weeks. Since early December, it has fluctuated between -13 and -11, on net. Part of that stability comes down to the usual dearth of polls during the holiday season. As of today, Trump’s net approval rating in our average is -12.0.
But there’s only one poll in the average (from Reuters/Ipsos) fielded completely after the Venezuela strike, and a couple more that overlap it by at least a day. In that Reuters/Ipsos, 33 percent of Americans approved of the Venezuela raid and 34 percent disapproved. What about the other 33 percent? They answered “Don’t know” or skipped the question. It’ll take some time for Americans to develop more concrete opinions about the strike, and a lot of that will depend on what comes next. -EMD, 1/6/26
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.