President Trump’s poll numbers continue to fail. Trump watches Fox News regularly, so his finding that even working-class white voters are disillusioned with him likely permeates his bubble. On top of that, other polls have found support for his program at just 27%. More on that in a moment, but note that President Trump’s approval ratings are higher than his policies. This kind of disconnect is a no.
First, from Washington Monthly’s “Trump is losing the white working class.”
According to the latest Fox News poll, President Donald Trump’s job approval rating among white voters without a college degree is sluggish, with 49% approval rating and 51% disapproval rating.
This is just one polling agency, and the data for subgroups is subject to large margins of error. But working-class whites are the backbone of the Republican Party’s MAGA era. Among voter subgroups by race and education level in the 2024 presidential election, only non-college whites had a majority support for President Trump. It wasn’t a small difference either, it was almost a 2-to-1 difference. While the Fox News data may not be accurate—the latest Pew Research Center poll found Trump’s approval/disapproval among non-college whites was just above water, 51-48—a softening among Trump’s most trusted groups should send a shiver down the Republican spine.
Moreover, the Fox poll isn’t the only piece of data that justifies Republicans’ panic. Mr. Trump’s relatively broad (30 states won) but narrow (only 49% of the vote) victory in 2024 was helped by growing support among people of color and voters under 30. I recently covered how Trump and his party have eroded Latino gains over the past year, as reflected in several polls and election results. (Pew’s new poll shows President Trump’s approval and disapproval ratings among Hispanics are an abysmal 26-71.) This week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump’s approval rating among young voters, as measured by Cook Political Report’s data from the beginning of March to the beginning of January, has fallen by about 8 percentage points, from 44.4% to 32.6%.
The article points out that Trump’s approval ratings have been declining even before the two ICE killings in Minneapolis, that law enforcement officers across the country have condemned both executions as unjust, and that the Minneapolis Police Department’s bad looks have accused ICE of unjustly harassing off-duty officers for crimes of not being white.
Other takes:
New Pew Research poll: Support for Donald Trump
Agree: 37%
Disapproval: 61%
Admittedly, 37% is still too high. pic.twitter.com/uYBWoJBpLj
— Republicans Against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) January 29, 2026
Note also that this erosion seems to go against James Carville’s maxim: “It’s the economy, you idiot.” As trade economics shows, GDP growth is strong.
The stock market continues to set new highs. Despite scary headlines about large-scale layoffs at some major employers and the drumbeat of “AI is coming to your job,” jobless claims are modest, the headline unemployment rate is 4.4%, and experts describe the labor market as “resilient.”
Of course, for most people, it’s not difficult to describe their financial situation as “more than half empty.” President Trump realized that dialogue would not get him out of the price crisis, so he put forth a patchwork of plans, most of which were never implemented, and even if they were, they wouldn’t make much of a difference. He points to a train wreck hitting many household budgets: a huge increase in health insurance costs. This is especially true for former Obamacare Enhancement subsidy recipients. And remember, these results come even as the administration overheats the economy by predicting a $2 trillion budget deficit in fiscal year 2026.
And in the category of “more inconvenient news”:
President Trump: “My tariffs will reduce the U.S. trade deficit”
The U.S. trade deficit surged 94% in November, the largest widening in nearly 34 years.
𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐟𝐟 𝐭𝐞𝐦𝐩𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐦𝐬 all seem to be counterproductive 🤡 pic.twitter.com/wL4BRaA8WF
— Alex Taylor (@AlexTaylorNews) January 30, 2026
How does this jibe with Trump “promote” how great we are doing! Trump’s stupid tariffs have actually increased our trade deficit by 95%!! We all have to wake up!! Prices are going to go up and up and we’re going to leave it at that. Stop Trumper! pic.twitter.com/rK8y2pCyFV
— Dr. Bob Smith (@DrBobSmith1533) January 30, 2026
Evidence across many sectors shows that the super-rich are benefiting from the Trump economy, while others are getting screwed. pic.twitter.com/9l6aYk1jIc
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) January 29, 2026
To accomplish this, President Trump will need to:
interest rates drop to zero percent
without unemployment
$7 trillion stimulus package
low inflation
2.65% mortgage interest rate
Good luck https://t.co/TjegLlkK6u
— Darth Powell (@VladTheInflator) January 29, 2026
The U.S. dollar has fallen nearly 11% since President Trump took office. America First puts America last on the world stage. The US economy will be paralyzed as the world sells US holdings. How many more blows will the wealthy interests suffer before they revolt against this regime? pic.twitter.com/LA7jCdZh7R
— Fuck You I Quit (@fuckyouiquit) January 27, 2026
Despite Twitter’s right-wing bias, a search for “Trump economy” generated far more critical than positive tweets.
In his latest post. G. Elliott Morris discusses the gap between President Trump’s declining approval ratings and the state of even smiling support for Trump’s policies:
Pew isn’t the only pollster to see a difference between general support for President Trump and support for his policies. Earlier this month, CBS News revealed that while 50% of adults say they support what President Trump is trying to accomplish on immigration, only 37% support “the way he is approaching it” (a 13-point difference). YouGov found the same pattern this week. While 51% say they support President Trump’s goals on immigration policy, only 27% support both the goals and their implementation (a 24-point difference)….
Across polls, there is a striking difference between what Americans generally say they support and what they actually support. Historically, political scientists have noticed a similar gap between an individual’s “symbolic” and “operational” ideology.
This is an important question, so let’s stop for a moment. We have repeatedly pointed out that public opinion polls show solid majority support at worst for all kinds of policies that are misleadingly labeled as left-wing, from strengthening Social Security and Medicare to taxing the wealthy, from cutting military spending to increasing education spending. However, many of these respondents would identify themselves as centrists or even conservatives, even though they hold “progressive” positions on all the big issues in the “progressive” platform.
Morris confirms this trend.
In their 2012 book American Ideology, Christopher Ellis and James Stimso found that Americans prefer ideas such as limited government, law and order, and traditional values. But when asked about specific programs and policies, they generally want the government to do more, not less, and to read more left than right.
In other words, decades of Liberian/neoliberal propaganda have infiltrated, just as the movements behind the Powell memorandum wanted. The second half of Morris’ post reads:
To be clear, there is utility in being a party with a symbolic advantage on this issue. A new Reuters/Ipsos poll released this week found that 37% of adults support Republicans on immigration, compared to 32% who support Democrats, even though President Trump’s immigration policies are highly unpopular.
But when voters encounter policies they don’t approve of in the real world, they have an opportunity to reduce the other side’s advantage.
On immigration, it was clear early in his presidency that President Trump’s unpopular policies would cause his approval ratings and confidence metrics to decline over time. Every video of dozens of agents swarming an apartment building, every footage of entire citizens being unjustly detained and lawful residents being unjustly deported, every lie about the shooting caught on camera reinforces the reality of the problem.
And this has been the reality of President Trump since 2015. As soon as he implements his campaign’s policies, voters think twice. Americans prefer the idea of President Trump’s policies to the reality of them. Border walls were exciting until they ended up taking ranchers’ land away. The words “drain the swamp” were echoed until they meant the inspector general’s dismissal. “America first” sounded strong until allies started hedging and supply chains were disrupted.
This is the fundamental contradiction of Trumpism. Trumpism is a governing philosophy built entirely on symbols and confronts a politically driven world. Trump won in 2024 not because Americans wanted what he was selling, but because voters wanted what he thought he was selling: lower prices, “secure borders,” and benign gains in manufacturing jobs.
But you can’t control the atmosphere forever. Ultimately, policies need to be implemented. And when a policy’s popularity is significantly lower than its symbol, the average Trump supporter realizes that they weren’t actually in MAGA after all.
Another factor to keep in mind is that this rapid and sustained decline in approval ratings is occurring even as President Trump moves frantically from one high-profile strategy to the next, including Caracas, Greenland, Iran and Mr. Powell’s criminal charges, recent conflicts with universities and the scientific community, and a feud with the Peace Commission. These distractions and exhausting efforts have not stopped his support from declining. As far as American voters are concerned, they may be making things even worse.
Want to know how badly President Trump is doing in the Greenland polls? It’s worse than the Epstein file.
Seriously, Trump’s net approval rating on the Greenland purchase attempt (-40 points) is lower than his net approval rating on the Epstein file (-38 points).
Greenland is perhaps President Trump’s worst polling issue. pic.twitter.com/WXPk7qfBUi
— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) January 21, 2026
Perhaps Mr. Trump is unable to control his strong desire for control and surrounds himself with all kinds of people and enablers. Or perhaps, as President Trump made clear in his New York Times interview, he believes his power has no limits and is simply seeking to remove obstacles to authoritarian rule. The test will be whether there will be midterm elections.
