Trump's approval ratings: What the latest polls show

Carson Swick, Baltimore Sun on Feb 8, 2025

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BALTIMORE — Nearly three weeks into his second term, President Donald Trump appears to be retaining the support that led to his return to power.

FiveThirtyEight polling averages show Trump, who never earned positive marks during his first term or subsequent presidential campaigns, has considerably narrowed the gap in his favorability rating over the past three months. Trump’s net favorability rating improved from 8.6 percentage points underwater on Election Day to just 0.6 percentage points underwater on Thursday, according to the averages.

When the conversation is framed around approval of Trump’s performance as president, he earns even better marks. FiveThirtyEight averages give him a 49% approval rating and 44% disapproval rating nationally as of Feb. 6. These ratings are considerably stronger than the marks Trump received on Feb. 6, 2017, as the then-45th president had a 44% approval rating and 48% disapproval rating, according to FiveThirtyEight averages.

Polls considered by the current average include the Napolitan Institute’s RMG Research poll, which was taken from Jan. 27 to Jan. 31, and a YouGov/The Economist poll taken from Feb. 2 to Feb. 4. These polls measured Trump’s net approval ratings at +10% and +2%, respectively.

While Trump is in a stronger position than at any point in his political career, his numbers still pale in comparison to those of his two Democratic predecessors at this point in their presidencies.

According to FiveThirtyEight averages, President Joe Biden had a 54% approval rating and 36% disapproval rating on Feb. 6, 2021. President Barack Obama had a 61% average approval rating and 26% average disapproval rating just weeks into his first term in February 2009.

Future polling numbers will continue to reflect public attitude shifts as Trump aggressively pursues initiatives such as tariffs and widespread cuts to American foreign aid.

Data released Thursday by the online pollster Civiqs shows Trump’s favorability rating in each U.S. state.

Predictably, the president is most popular in deep-red states like Wyoming and West Virginia, with net favorability ratings of +41%. He also cracks +30% net favorability in oil-rich states like North Dakota (+36%) and Oklahoma (+30%).

Unsurprisingly, solid blue states are the most hostile to Trump. Vermont leads the way with a -42% net favorability rating, but Maryland is not far behind at -36% — meaning 31% of Marylanders view the president favorably while 67% do not.

Interestingly, the Civiqs poll shows Trump’s favorability rating underwater in six of the seven of the “swing states” he won last November: Georgia (-4%), Michigan (-3%), Nevada (-1%), North Carolina (-4%), Pennsylvania (-5%) and Wisconsin (-6%). Arizona (+3%) is the only swing state where the president has a net positive rating, likely due to his handling of immigration and U.S.-Mexico border issues.

These figures would perhaps indicate that these critical voters who swung the election to Trump — either by voting for him or by not voting at all, such as occurred in the majority-Arab city of Dearborn, Michigan — were more motivated by opposition to Vice President Kamala Harris and other Democrats than by strong support for Trump.

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