President Donald Trump has courted support from conservatives for a decade, since he began campaigning for the 2016 presidential election. However, recent polls show that support for Trump among his base is slipping.
Polls from both the Pew Research Center and the Economist/YouGov show support for Trump trending down among Republicans. More than 3,500 adults participated in the Pew survey from Aug. 4 through Aug. 10 and more than 1,600 people participated in the Economist/YouGov poll from Aug. 9 through Aug. 11.
“Trump’s approval rating has slipped 3 percentage points over the last two months and is down 9 points since shortly after he took office,” said the Pew Research Center. “This drop is attributable to a combination of declining approval among his 2024 backers and adults who did not vote in November.”
Those Pew results released Thursday found that his approval rating among Trump supporters dropped around 10% from the weeks just after his inauguration in January (95%) to early August (85%). They slipped 3% from June to August alone among Trump supporters.
Among Pew respondents who identified as strong Republicans, a vast majority (93%) approved of Trump’s job performance, but that was still down from 96% at the start of his term. There has been an even more steep drop in approval among those who identify as Republicans but not “strongly” and independent voters who lean towards the GOP.
Some specific issues that Trump has been losing Republican support on include management of how the federal government works and the handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case. Pew’s results showed that 55% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents now say Trump is improving the way the federal government works, a significant drop from the 76% of Republicans expected he would make government work better. Trump’s creation of Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), formerly led by Elon Musk, made headlines and drew criticism this year.
Epstein, a convicted sex offender who was also a well-known financier with many connections among notable figures, died in his jail cell around six years ago. Since then, there have been many questions about the case, and high-profile people Epstein knew, including Trump. Though Attorney General Pam Bondi said she would release more information about the case, the federal government appeared to backtrack, leading to yet more questions.
Pew’s survey results found that more than half (53%) of Republicans disapprove of they way the Trump administration has handled the Epstein case. Younger Republicans were more likely to disapprove than older Republicans. Last month, Audacy reported on other data that indicated Trump was losing support from some of the younger male voters who help boost him during the 2024 election.
“Trump’s support among Republicans, while still very high, has slowly trended downwards since the start of his second term,” said a roundup of the Economist/YouGov poll results.
While Republicans and independents who leaned Republican approved of Trump in late January, per the outlets, that dropped to 88% by mid-May. As of this week, that fell even further, to 83%.
“The 9-point drop in approval of Trump among Republican-leaning Americans, from 92% to 83%, is equivalent to an overall drop in approval of Trump of around 4% of all U.S. adult citizens,” Economist/YouGov said.
Audacy reported in June that Trump lashed out at Fox News for coverage of his slipping approval ratings. We also reported in May that his approval rating among Republicans seemed to be slipping. Overall, Pew’s survey found his approval rating among people of all political affilations was at around 38%, Economist/YouGov’s had it at 42% and an aggregate approval rating calculated by Real Clear Politics had it at around 46%.
Morning Consult polling data released Aug. 12 showed that Trump’s approval rating remained “above water” in 27 states. It also said that that his approval rating is under 50% in two states that will have significant gubernatorial elections this year: Virginia and New Jersey.