Photo: Intelligencer; Photo: Getty Images

Three weeks into the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, there are growing signs that it’s going very badly for Donald Trump: spiraling energy prices, confused messaging, diplomatic disarray, and ever-lengthening timelines for conclusion of the conflict. The war is as unpopular as Trump himself, though the administration is urging the media and the public to focus solely on its military successes. The commander-in-chief’s public approval is already weakening, with the worst very likely still to come.

In the Silver Bulletin polling averages, the president’s net job approval dropped to a new second-term low this week, reaching minus-15.3 percent on March 18 (a new Emerson College poll bumped it back up to minus-14.8 percent on March 20). The mix of pollsters — some of whom would show Trump as relatively popular under any conceivable circumstances — builds some instability into the president’s numbers, but the overall trend lines are pretty clear. His job-approval average (now at 40.4 percent) has been under 43 percent since mid-December; his job-disapproval average (now at 55.6 percent) has been over 54 percent since the beginning of the year. His current job-approval rating is lower than that of any president at this point in his first term dating back to World War II. That includes his own first term.

The war isn’t helping him. Now that it’s been part of the daily news for a while, the percentage of Americans with no opinion about the war has dropped steadily, and we can get a sense of the underlying level of support. It’s net negative in every recent poll. In the most recent surveys, the percentage of Americans supporting the war ranges from a low of 33 percent at Economist-YouGov, to 37 percent at Reuters/Ipsos, to 40 percent at Emerson, to 43 percent at Morning Consult and Echelon Insights. Polls with crosstabs invariably show strong support among self-identified MAGA folk (78 percent, according to a March 16 Economist-YouGov survey), with declining support among Republicans generally (73 percent) and Trump 2024 voters generally (69 percent). In the same poll, support for the war drops to 25 percent among Hispanics, 23 percent among independents, and 22 percent among those under the age of 30.

In terms of what happens next in the Middle East, polls consistently show majorities of Americans opposing the introduction of U.S. ground troops. The recent Economist-YouGov survey, for example, shows 64 percent of Americans opposing that development, and even a slight plurality of MAGA supporters opposing it. A more nuanced set of questions from Reuters-Ipsos, however, indicated that if ground troops are limited to “special forces” operatives, it wouldn’t be as strongly unpopular: While only 7 percent of Americans would support a “large-scale invasion,” 34 percent would support a “special forces only” deployment (a percentage that rises to 63 percent among Republicans, aside from the 14 percent who would back a full-on invasion).

Aside from the war, Trump’s approval numbers on specific issues remain underwater and relatively stagnant. According to the Silver Bulletin averages, he’s at net minus-9.6 percent (a bit better than when ICE atrocities were dominating the news) on immigration, minus-19.7 percent on the economy, and minus-27.5 percent on inflation. These last two numbers bear watching if, as expected, high gasoline and other energy prices persist and other economic indicators remain shaky as the war drags on.

The generic congressional ballots showing party preferences in votes for the U.S. House remain solidly if not overwhelmingly pro-Democratic. Silver Bulletin pegs the Democratic advantage as 5.2 percent; it’s at 4.9 percent at Decision Desk HQ and 4.8 percent at Real Clear Politics. For what it’s worth, at this point in 2022 RCP gave Republicans a 3.5 percent advantage in the generic congressional ballot, and the GOP ultimately posted a net gain of nine House seats and flipped control of the chamber. With Republicans holding a mere two-seat majority in the House right now, there’s a lot of reason for Democrats to be optimistic about breaking up the GOP trifecta in November.


See All

Sign Up for the Intelligencer Newsletter

Daily news about the politics, business, and technology shaping our world.

Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice