Reference · Understanding American Government
In brief: A presidential approval rating is the share of Americans who say they approve of the way the president is handling the job. Gallup’s records, kept for more than eight decades until it stopped in 2026, run from George W. Bush’s 90% after 9/11 to Harry Truman’s 22% in 1952. Today approval comes from polls such as AP-NORC and Pew and from polling averages, and it splits more sharply by party than ever.
What is a presidential approval rating?
An approval rating is a simple snapshot of public opinion. Pollsters ask a random sample of adults whether they approve or disapprove of the president’s job performance, then report the percentage who approve, the percentage who disapprove and the share with no opinion.
The standard question comes from Gallup. As the American Presidency Project at UC Santa Barbara records it, the wording is: “Do you approve or disapprove of the way [president’s name] is handling his job as president?” Because the wording barely changed for decades, the numbers can be compared from one president to the next.
A rating measures job performance, not personal liking. A voter can like a president and still disapprove of how he is doing the job, or the other way around. It is also a measure of all adults, not only registered or likely voters.
When did Gallup start measuring presidential approval?
George Gallup first asked about presidential approval in the late 1930s, under Franklin D. Roosevelt. Gallup began measuring it routinely during Harry Truman’s presidency, which is why most historical comparisons start in 1945.
On February 11, 2026, Gallup announced it would stop publishing approval ratings for presidents and other political figures, calling it “a strategic shift solely based on Gallup’s research goals and priorities.” Its final published readings for Donald Trump were 36% in November and December 2025. Gallup’s historical tables stay online and are still the main benchmark for comparing presidents.
Who tracks presidential approval now?
As of October 2026, several organizations publish approval figures. Single polls come from named pollsters, and averages combine many polls to smooth out the noise in any one survey.
- AP-NORC (Associated Press and NORC at the University of Chicago) runs a regular survey of adults. Its September 24–28, 2026 poll put Trump’s approval at 31%.
- Pew Research Center surveys approval several times a year and compares presidents at the same point in their terms.
- RealClearPolitics (RealClearPolling) publishes a running average. On October 7, 2026 it showed Trump at 38.4% approve and 59.5% disapprove.
- Silver Bulletin, Nate Silver’s newsletter, publishes a weighted average. Its October 7, 2026 update put Trump’s net approval at -21.9.
- Ballotpedia keeps a 30-day polling index. It reported Trump at 39% approval at the end of September 2026, near the 38% low of his second term.
Many other pollsters also ask the question, including Quinnipiac, Reuters/Ipsos, Economist/YouGov, CBS News, Marist and NYT/Siena. Because their methods differ (adults versus voters, phone versus online), a single poll can land several points away from the average.
What were each president’s highest and lowest approval ratings?
The table below uses Gallup’s published figures for each president from Truman through Biden, as listed in Gallup’s historical statistics and trends. The term average is the mean of all Gallup readings during the presidency.
| President | Years | Highest (Gallup) | Lowest (Gallup) | Term average |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Harry Truman | 1945–1953 | 87% (June 1945) | 22% (February 1952) | 45.4% |
| Dwight Eisenhower | 1953–1961 | 79% (December 1956) | 48% (spring 1958) | 65.0% |
| John F. Kennedy | 1961–1963 | 83% (April 1961) | 56% (September 1963) | 70.1% |
| Lyndon Johnson | 1963–1969 | 79% (early 1964) | 35% (August 1968) | 55.1% |
| Richard Nixon | 1969–1974 | 67% (Nov. 1969, Jan. 1973) | 24% (July–August 1974) | 49.0% |
| Gerald Ford | 1974–1977 | 71% (August 1974) | 37% (early 1975) | 47.2% |
| Jimmy Carter | 1977–1981 | 75% (March 1977) | 28% (mid-1979) | 45.5% |
| Ronald Reagan | 1981–1989 | 68% (May 1981, May 1986) | 35% (January 1983) | 52.8% |
| George H.W. Bush | 1989–1993 | 89% (February 1991) | 29% (summer 1992) | 60.9% |
| Bill Clinton | 1993–2001 | 73% (December 1998) | 37% (June 1993) | 55.1% |
| George W. Bush | 2001–2009 | 90% (September 2001) | 25% (October 2008) | 49.4% |
| Barack Obama | 2009–2017 | 69% (January 2009) | 38% (2011, 2014) | 47.9% |
| Donald Trump (1st term) | 2017–2021 | 49% (early 2020) | 34% (January 2021) | 41.1% |
| Joe Biden | 2021–2025 | 57% (2021) | 36% (July 2024) | 42.2% |
| Donald Trump (2nd term) | 2025– | 47% (January 2025) | 36% (Nov.–Dec. 2025) | No final average |
Trump’s second-term row covers only Gallup’s readings from January through December 2025, before Gallup stopped tracking. Gallup will publish no term average for it. More recent polls from other organizations, listed above, have shown his approval in the 30s through September 2026.
What are the most famous highs and lows?
- George W. Bush, 90% (September 21–22, 2001). This is the highest rating in Gallup’s history, recorded ten days after the September 11 attacks. By October 2008, during the financial crisis, Bush had fallen to 25%.
- George H.W. Bush, 89% (February 1991). This came at the end of the Persian Gulf War. Within about 18 months, during an economic slowdown, he had dropped to 29%, and he lost re-election in 1992.
- Harry Truman, 22% (February 1952). This is the lowest rating Gallup ever recorded. It came during the Korean War, and Truman did not seek another term.
- Richard Nixon, 24% (July–August 1974). Nixon’s approval fell as the Watergate scandal grew, and he resigned in August 1974.
- John F. Kennedy, 83% (April 1961). Kennedy’s peak came just after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, an early example of the public rallying around a president in a crisis.
Do presidents get a honeymoon period?
Most new presidents start with their highest or near-highest ratings. Kennedy, Carter and Obama all hit their peaks in their first months. Gallup reports that Biden stayed above 50% for about his first six months before declining.
The honeymoon has shrunk in recent decades. Trump began his first term at 45% and his second at 47%, both below the starting points of earlier presidents. Because so many voters now judge a president on party lines from day one, there is less room for an early surge.
Why does approval matter in midterm elections?
Approval ratings help predict how the president’s party does in midterm elections. Gallup found that from 1946 to 2014, when the president’s approval was below 50%, his party lost an average of 37 House seats. When approval was above 50%, the average loss was 14 seats.
Approval also tends to drift down over the first two years, as early promises meet hard choices and unpopular trade-offs. Political scientists sometimes call this the midterm slump.
What is the “rally ’round the flag” effect?
Political scientist John Mueller described how sudden international crises can briefly lift a president’s approval, a pattern he called the rally ’round the flag effect. His 1970 study, “Presidential Popularity from Truman to Johnson” in the American Political Science Review, modeled approval using time in office, major international events, economic slumps and war.
The biggest rallies in Gallup’s records (George W. Bush after 9/11 and his father during the Gulf War) both came from foreign crises. Rallies usually fade within months. Mueller’s work also found that approval tends to fall the longer a president is in office.
How does the economy affect approval?
Economic conditions are among the strongest influences on approval. Rising unemployment, inflation or a recession usually pull ratings down, as with Carter in 1979, Reagan in 1983 and George H.W. Bush in 1992. Reagan’s approval recovered as the economy improved, and he won re-election in 1984.
The link has weakened somewhat as partisanship has grown. Voters now often see the economy itself through a partisan lens, which the psychology section below explains.
How polarized is presidential approval?
The gap between how Republicans and Democrats rate the same president has grown steadily. Gallup’s party breakdown shows average gaps across each presidency:
| President | Avg. approval among own party | Avg. approval among other party | Gap (points) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Eisenhower | 88% | 49% | 39 |
| Kennedy | 84% | 49% | 35 |
| Reagan | 83% | 31% | 52 |
| Clinton | 82% | 27% | 55 |
| George W. Bush | 84% | 23% | 61 |
| Obama | 83% | 13% | 70 |
| Trump (1st term) | 88% | 7% | 81 |
| Biden | 85% | 6% | 79 |
The single largest gap Gallup recorded was 92 points, just before the 2020 election (95% of Republicans versus 3% of Democrats). In November 2025, Gallup found Trump at 84% among Republicans and 3% among Democrats.
Why do modern presidents rarely get above 50 or 60 percent?
No president since Obama’s first months has recorded a Gallup rating of 60% or higher. Biden peaked at 57%, and Trump never reached 50% in Gallup’s polling in either term. The last president to average above 50% for a full presidency was Clinton, at 55.1%.
The main reason is polarization. When almost no one in the opposing party approves, a president’s ceiling is set by his own party plus a share of independents. That makes both the old highs (the 70s and 80s) and the deepest lows (the 20s) harder to reach than before.
Why do people see the same president so differently?
Psychologists and political scientists who study political psychology point to partisanship as a social identity. For many Americans, party now works like a team or tribe, so a president’s success or failure can feel personal. Research on affective polarization, such as Shanto Iyengar and colleagues’ 2019 review in the Annual Review of Political Science, documents how much more negatively partisans now feel about the other side.
Motivated reasoning adds to this. People tend to accept information that supports what they already believe and to question information that does not. Larry Bartels’ 2002 study “Beyond the Running Tally” in Political Behavior found that partisan bias shapes how people perceive even objective conditions, such as the state of the economy. That is why the same jobs report or foreign event can push Democrats and Republicans in opposite directions.
These patterns apply across parties and eras. For a closer look at one group of voters, see the commentary on the psychology of Trump supporters from 2016 to 2026, and research on how group chats can shape political opinions.
Key takeaways
- An approval rating is the share of adults who approve of how the president is handling the job, based on Gallup’s long-standing question.
- Gallup’s records run from George W. Bush’s 90% high in 2001 to Truman’s 22% low in 1952. Kennedy holds the highest term average (70.1%).
- Gallup stopped tracking approval in 2026, so current figures come from pollsters like AP-NORC and Pew and from averages such as RealClearPolitics and Silver Bulletin.
- Honeymoons, midterm losses, crisis rallies and the economy all move approval, but partisanship is now the strongest force.
- For more on presidents themselves, see American presidents through history and executive orders explained.
More in Understanding American Government
- The American Presidents: A Short History of the Office
- Executive Orders Explained: What They Are and How They Work
- Landmark Laws That Shaped America
- Treaties and International Agreements: How the U.S. Makes Them
Sources
- Presidential Approval Ratings — Gallup Historical Statistics and Trends — Gallup
- Presidential Approval Ratings — Donald Trump — Gallup
- Last Trump Job Approval 34%; Average Is Record-Low — Gallup
- Biden Job Approval Second Lowest Among Post-WWII Presidents — Gallup
- Midterm Seat Loss Averages 37 for Unpopular Presidents — Gallup
- Presidential Job Approval — The American Presidency Project, UC Santa Barbara
- Gallup’s presidential approval ratings poll is ending after eight decades — Axios
- President Trump Job Approval — RealClearPolling
- Trump saw lowest average approval rating of his second term in September — Ballotpedia News
- Presidential Popularity from Truman to Johnson — American Political Science Review
Part of the brossi.us reference library, written for readers of Dr. Bart Rossi, PhD. Last reviewed October 2026.