President Trump's approval ratings slide, but Democrats' poll numbers hitting new lows

Fox News

07-05-2025

President Donald Trump has some polling problems with his approval ratings sliding into negative territory since he reentered the White House three and a half months ago. But he's far from alone when it comes to taking a political punch in public opinion.
The opposing Democratic Party's favorable ratings keep sinking to new lows.
Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin said this past weekend in a "Fox News Sunday" interview that the party's focus right now is "squarely on making sure that we stand up for hardworking Americans who are being left behind in this Trump economy."
But many Americans apparently don't believe that Democrats are up to the task.
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The Democrats' ratings stood underwater in the latest Fox News national poll at 41% favorable and 56% unfavorable in a survey conducted April 18-21.
That's an all-time low for the Democrats in Fox News polling. And for the first time in a decade, the party's standing was lower than that of the GOP, which stood at 44% favorable and 54% unfavorable.
The figures were reversed last summer, when Fox News last asked the party favorability question in one of its surveys.
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The Fox News poll is far from an outlier.
The Democratic Party's favorable ratings were well in negative territory in a Pew Research national survey - 38% favorable, 60% unfavorable - conducted in early April and at 36% favorable, 60% unfavorable in a Wall Street Journal poll in the field a couple of weeks earlier.
And national polls conducted in February by Quinnipiac University and March by CNN and by NBC News also indicated the favorable ratings for the Democratic Party sinking to all-time lows.
But there's more.
Confidence in the Democratic Party's congressional leadership sunk to an all-time low, according to a Gallup poll conducted early last month.
The confidence rating for Democrats' leadership in Congress stood at 25% in the survey, which was nine points below the previous low of 34% recorded in 2023.
The semi-annual Harvard Youth Poll, which was released late last month, indicated that approval ratings for Democrats in Congress among Americans aged 18-29 nosedived.
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An ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll conducted in mid-April indicated that more respondents trusted Trump (40%) than Democrats in Congress (32%) to handle the nation's main problems.
And a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted late last month suggested Republicans hold a significant advantage over Democrats on two top issues: the economy and immigration.
The Democratic Party has been in the political wilderness since last November's election setbacks, when Republicans won back control of the White House and the Senate and defended their fragile House majority. And Republicans made gains among Black and Hispanic voters as well as younger voters, all traditional members of the Democratic Party's base.
Since Trump's return to power, an increasingly angry and energized base of Democrats is pushing for party leaders to take a stronger stand in pushing back against the president's sweeping and controversial agenda during the opening months of his second administration.
"What we've seen over the last few months is some Democrats taking it upon themselves to tackle what has been a larger brand problem over the past decade and a half," a Democrat strategist and communicator who's a veteran of presidential campaigns told Fox News.
The anger not only at Trump and Republicans but also at fellow Democrats appears to be a factor in the party's polling woes, with the drop in positivity toward the Democrats in the Fox News poll partially being a self-inflicted wound. Party favorability among self-identified Democrats plunged 10 points from last summer (87%) to last month (77%) in the survey.
At the same time, the Republican Party saw a slight improvement among their party faithful: 83% of self-identified Republicans had a favorable view in 2024 vs. 85% in April.
But there's a silver lining for the Democrats.
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"The higher favorable rating for the Republican Party is entirely due to Democrats feeling less favorable toward their party than Republicans do toward theirs," said Democrat pollster Chris Anderson, who conducts the Fox News surveys with Republican Daron Shaw. "This in and of itself is unlikely to translate into midterm success for the GOP as Democrats say they will almost universally vote for their party and independents favor the Democrats as well."
The Fox News poll indicates that if the 2026 midterm elections were held today, 49% of voters would back a generic Democrat in their congressional district, with 42% supporting the generic Republican candidate.
Fox News' Victoria Balara contributed to this report.