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Approval Hits 33%
President Donald Trump’s approval rating fell to 33%, the lowest level of his presidency, in a Reuters/Ipsos poll that concluded on Monday.
“Just 33% of respondents in the four-day survey said they approved”
The four-day survey found that 64% of respondents disapproved of Trump’s performance in the White House, while 33% approved.
The poll also found that 80% of Americans fear the U.S. war with Iran will last a long time, including 87% of Democrats and 71% of Republicans.
Only 16% said the conflict would likely end in a few weeks, as the Reuters/Ipsos poll reported that the survey was conducted online among 1,166 U.S. adults nationwide.
The Reuters/Ipsos results were framed as a continuation of Trump’s declining popularity after he ordered strikes on Iran alongside U.S. ally Israel in late February.
Gas Prices and Iran
The Reuters/Ipsos poll tied Trump’s low approval to Americans’ concern about the duration of the Iran conflict and to fuel costs, saying the ensuing conflict “triggering a surge in the price of gasoline which is weighing on U.S. households.”
In the same Reuters/Ipsos reporting, Trump told a political rally in Garden City, New York, that paying “a tiny little bit more for your gasoline” is worth the cost of ensuring “a very evil country” could not have a nuclear weapon.
The poll described that the conflict paralyzed a fifth of the global oil trade and that Iran kept the oil and gas export trade through the Strait of Hormuz largely bottled up even as the conflict cooled.
It also reported that 64% of Americans disapproved of how Trump handled his job performance, while 33% approved, in the four-day survey.
The Reuters/Ipsos findings were presented alongside the detail that the online survey had a margin of error of 3 percentage points in either direction.
Midterm Stakes and Polls
The Reuters/Ipsos reporting linked the polling slide to November midterm elections, saying concerns about the war and gasoline prices have Republicans nervous about defending their slim majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.
“have Republicans nervous about their hopes of defending their slim majority in the U.S. House”
It also said Democrats increasingly see the U.S. Senate within their grasp, while Reuters/Ipsos polling this month showed voters prefer Democrats over Republicans as better stewards of the economy for the first time in about a decade.
In that same Reuters/Ipsos framing, the latest poll showed 38% of voters think Democrats will handle the economy better, compared to 35% who prefer the Republican approach.
The Reuters/Ipsos reporting also said the Republican approach to immigration remained more popular than that of Democrats, with 40% of registered voters saying Republicans have the better approach on immigration policy compared to 38% who pick Democrats.
Separately, USA Today reported that an Economist/YouGov poll released Aug. 4 found 36% of Americans approved of Trump’s job performance, with the poll conducted July 31 to Aug. 3 among 1,609 adults and a margin of error of plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.
