Trump approval sinks to second-term low as he weighs in on primaries
Trump’s approval fell to 37% while most of his Indiana primary picks won, underscoring a widening gap between his national weakness and his inside-party reach.
Donald Trump is still forcing Republican primaries to bend around him, even as a new wave of polling showed his approval rating sinking to a second-term low and his standing on the economy and Iran deteriorating further.
A New York Times/Siena poll released May 18 put Trump at 37% approval and 59% disapproval, the latest sign that his political ceiling remains low with the broader electorate. Mid-May polling trackers placed his approval in the high 30s and disapproval near 60%, while AP-NORC and PBS NewsHour reported even weaker numbers on the issues that usually define a presidency: just 30% approved of his handling of the economy in April, down from 38% in March, and only 32% approved of his leadership on Iran.
Those numbers matter because Trump has not backed away from the most old-fashioned use of presidential power inside his party: choosing winners and losers in Republican primaries. In Indiana’s May 5 contests, Trump-backed candidates targeted GOP state senators who had refused to support his push to redraw the state’s congressional map. A majority of the seven Trump-endorsed challengers won, and NBC projected that at least five of the seven incumbent senators lost. The fights came after months of threats and roughly $9 million in spending to finance the challengers, turning the Indiana races into one of the clearest tests yet of whether Trump’s endorsement still outweighs broader unease about his presidency.
The Indiana results suggested that, for now, Trump’s influence remains potent when the target is a local Republican official who crosses him. But the episode also exposed a party power structure growing more fragmented beneath him. Indiana Senate Republicans who resisted redistricting were punished, yet the broader polling backdrop showed Trump losing ground on personal traits as well as policy. Pew Research found that fewer Americans in May said he keeps his promises, and views of his honesty and ethics and mental sharpness also worsened.
Even inside his coalition, the support looks less solid than it once did. Pew said 66% of Latino Trump voters approved of his job performance, still a strong number but down 27 percentage points from the start of his second term. Brookings said the combination of Trump’s falling approval, voter dissatisfaction with the economy and frustration over Iran was darkening Republican midterm prospects, with the 2026 cycle already shaping up as a broader test of whether his grip on the GOP can hold when his national numbers cannot.
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