President Donald Trump’s strong approval rating fell to 19 percent in an October Napolitan News Service survey, its lowest level across the series.
The Poll at a Glance
- Overall job approval in the new poll stood at 41 percent, against 58 percent disapproval.
- The resulting net approval rating (those who approve minus those who disapprove) was -17 points.
- Strong disapproval reached 46 percent.
- Scott Rasmussen, who is widely considered to be a conservative pollster, conducted the online poll for Napolitan News Service among 2,000 registered voters from October 5 to 13.
- The margin of sampling error was plus or minus 2.2 percentage points.
The decline in Trump’s strong approval rating matters because Republicans are asking voters to treat the president as a stand-in candidate weeks before the November 3 midterms.
The president himself has asked his supporters to act as though he were on the ballot, a campaign message he has repeated often in recent weeks, as forecasts have shifted to favor Democrats to gain control of both chambers.
VoteHub’s October 15 forecast gave Democrats an 84 percent chance of controlling the House and a 59 percent chance of taking the Senate.
Prediction markets also favored unified Democratic control, priced at 63 percent on Polymarket and 62 percent on Kalshi, although those figures reflect traders’ collective expectations rather than polling or a guaranteed result.
GOP contenders fighting for control of Congress must mobilize Trump’s coalition while facing evidence that opposition to his presidency is both broader and more intense.
But the administration rejects the suggestion that Trump has become an electoral liability.
“No one can dispute the fact that President Trump has created one of the most robust coalitions in political history with the MAGA movement, and the President understands how to communicate with them,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle told Newsweek.
“President Trump is the unequivocal leader, best messenger, and unmatched motivator for the Republican Party, and he is committed to maintaining Republican majorities in Congress.”
Why It Matters
Presidential approval is not a congressional ballot, but it helps describe the political climate in which House and Senate races are being decided.
A widening intensity gap may make persuasion harder and leave Republican campaigns increasingly dependent on turnout.
Intensity Gap Widens
That 27-point difference between those who strongly approve and those who strongly disapprove of Trump’s job performance was the largest negative intensity gap in the published series, exceeding the negative 25-point readings recorded in four earlier surveys.
The previous poll, conducted from September 28 to October 6, placed strong approval at 20 percent and strong disapproval at 43 percent.
Movement between two individual surveys may reflect sampling variation.
The broader sequence is more politically useful: strong approval has remained between 19 and 25 percent across the displayed readings, whereas strong disapproval has ranged from 40 to 47 percent.
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What The Overall Rating Shows
Adding respondents who approved “somewhat” produces a less severe result than the intensity figures alone.
That distinction matters.
The headline finding is not that the president has lost every voter who previously backed him, but that the firmly supportive share has reached the bottom of this particular run while emphatic opposition remains much larger.
According to the published methodology, quotas were applied and the results were lightly weighted by geography, gender, age, race, education, internet use and political party.
Napolitan News Service paid for the survey as part of its service for Gold Circle members.
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Republicans Face A Turnout Test
The findings arrive as Trump tours battlegrounds and urges voters to “close your eyes and pretend I’m on the ballot.”
That strategy puts the president’s personal drawing power at the center of the Republican closing argument.
It also creates a difficult equation for candidates who need loyal MAGA voters without intensifying opposition among Americans dissatisfied with the administration.
Several strategists told Newsweek that opinions may already be difficult to shift.
“I think the cake is baked, but for some major external event,” Republican strategist Alex Patton said, arguing that the party was unlikely to resolve concerns over the Iran war, fuel and food prices or Trump’s approval ratings before Election Day.
Brittany Martinez, a Republican strategist and executive director of the anti-Trump group Principles First, offered a similarly bleak assessment.
“Voters have lived with this administration’s decisions for months; one announcement won’t erase that experience or restore their trust,” she told Newsweek.
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A separate Politico survey of 2,001 adults, conducted October 3-5, with a plus or minus 2.2 percentage point margin of error, found limited movement toward Republican candidates under hypothetical scenarios involving lower gasoline prices, new jobs or an end to the Iran war.
Only 29 percent said the gasoline-price scenario would make them more inclined to vote Republican, while 28 percent said the same about ending the conflict with Iran.
Among voters still unsure of their November 3 choice, those shares fell to 16 percent and 17 percent, respectively.
“This poll suggests Republicans have a problem that a single presidential announcement can’t solve,” George Hornedo, a political strategist and former Democratic congressional candidate, told Newsweek.
Republican consultant Matt Klink disputed that interpretation, calling the survey “fundamentally flawed” because it asked adults to predict their responses to hypothetical events.
“No political party seals a midterm victory three weeks out,” he told Newsweek, arguing that partisan voters’ answers reveal little about the smaller group that could still be persuaded.
Newsweek’s reporters and editors used Martyn, our AI assistant, to produce this story. Learn more about Martyn here.
Contact Newsweek editor on this story: Edward Pearcey.