President Donald Trump's approval rating has fallen to the lowest level of his presidency, with an overwhelming majority of Americans concerned that the US war with Iran will last a long time, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that concluded on Monday. Just 33% of respondents in the four-day survey said they approved of Trump's performance in the White House, while 64% disapproved, Reuters reported. The rating is down from 35% in a poll that closed earlier this month and has now tied the lowest level of his prior term, reached in December 2017.
Trump returned to the White House in 2025 with just under half the country approving of his presidency, according to Reuters, but his popularity took a hit this year after he ordered strikes on Iran alongside Israel. The conflict paralysed roughly a fifth of the global oil trade, triggering a surge in gasoline prices that is weighing on US households and on Republicans defending their congressional majorities in the November midterms. Trump had initially pledged the conflict would take a few weeks, but Iran has kept the oil trade through the Strait of Hormuz largely bottled up even as the conflict has cooled, Reuters reported.
Iran war seen dragging on
Some 80% of Americans, including 87% of Democrats and 71% of Republicans, believe US involvement in Iran will continue for an extended period, according to the poll, while just 16% said the conflict would likely end within a few weeks. Trump told a rally in Garden City, New York, on Friday that paying "a tiny little bit more for your gasoline" was worth the cost of preventing what he called "a very evil country" from acquiring a nuclear weapon, one of his stated justifications for the war. Only one in five Americans, and just half of Republicans, think the war has been worth it, the poll found.
Economy and immigration numbers shift
Concerns over the war and fuel prices have left Republicans nervous about defending their narrow House majority in the 3 November elections, with Democrats increasingly seeing the Senate as within reach too, according to Reuters. Polling this month shows voters now prefer Democrats over Republicans as stewards of the economy for the first time in about a decade, with 38% of voters favouring the Democratic approach compared with 35% for Republicans. Democrats are also seen as better placed to manage the cost of living.
On immigration, the Republican approach has remained more popular throughout Trump's term, amid a sharp fall in border crossings and a sustained nationwide crackdown, though that advantage is narrowing amid deadly confrontations and a rise in detentions, including of children. Some 40% of registered voters said Republicans have the better approach on immigration, against 38% who favoured Democrats, a two percentage point spread that Reuters describes as the smallest of Trump's term, down from a 26-point Republican lead in January 2025.
The poll was conducted online among 1,166 US adults nationwide, with a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
