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Donald Trump responds after historically low approval ratings revealed in midterm exit poll
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Donald Trump has recorded the lowest approval rating for a sitting president in a midterm election in nearly two decades, according to exit polls released as voting closed across the United States on Tuesday evening.
Just 38% of voters said they approved of the president's performance, with 62% saying they disapproved.
The numbers were consistent across exit polls conducted by NBC News, CBS News, and CNN, all of which converged on the same figure.
That is lower than any president has recorded on Election Day since George W. Bush in 2008, when the financial crisis was collapsing the global economy.
It is also significantly lower than Trump's own first-term midterm in 2018, when 45% of voters approved of his performance.
The numbers behind the headline
The 38% figure is the one that will define the night, but the detail underneath it is arguably worse for the White House.
Only 21% of voters said they 'strongly approve' of the president.
Nearly 49% said they 'strongly disapprove'.
That intensity gap means the people who dislike Trump do not just dislike him mildly.
They feel it deeply enough to show up and vote against his party as a result.
Nearly half of all voters told NBC News they viewed the midterm as an opportunity for a 'major rebuke' of the president's performance.
Three quarters of voters said they were at least 'dissatisfied' with the direction of the country, according to CBS. Only 25% said they were 'enthusiastic' or 'satisfied'.
Perhaps the most damaging finding for Trump personally is that 64% of all voters, including a third of people who voted for him in 2024, said the president has 'fallen short of their expectations'.
Among members of his own party, 37% said the same.
Where the erosion has happened
Trump's approval has dropped 18 points among white voters without college degrees since the start of his second term.
That is the demographic that carried him to the White House in 2016 and again in 2024. If they are walking away, the coalition that made him president is fracturing at its foundation.
He is also underwater in states he won two years ago.
In the states Trump carried in 2024, 53% of registered voters now disapprove of his performance, with just 47% approving. In March 2025, his approval in those same states was 10 points higher.
His approval among Hispanic voters, a group he made historic gains with in 2024, has also declined sharply, though specific exit poll numbers for that demographic had not been broken out at the time of writing.
What voters said matters most
The economy dominated. CNN's exit poll found 39% of voters named it as their top issue. Democracy was second at 32%. Immigration, which Trump has made the centrepiece of his political identity for a decade, came in third at 14%.
Health care, foreign policy, and crime rounded out the rest at 8%, 4%, and 3% respectively. The Iran war, which has been the defining geopolitical event of 2026, registered as a top concern for just 4% of voters, suggesting that domestic affordability is hitting harder than the conflict abroad.
CNN reported that voters across both parties expressed concern about 'affording everything from gas to groceries to utilities'. That is language that sounds like a recession even if the technical definition has not been met.
Trump's response on Truth Social
While exit poll numbers were being broadcast across every major network, Trump was on Truth Social doing what he always does when the data turns against him.
He called the Fox News exit poll 'so insulting with the questions they ask' and described the answers as 'BULLS**T!'
He complained about Fox News host Jessica Tarlov's voice, calling her 'DUMB AS A ROCK' and saying he would have to switch channels until she was off the air.
He later returned to the platform to claim Fox News ratings were 'way down (27%!)' because 'they're spending too much time covering the Trump Deranged Dumocrats'.
Earlier in the day, he had posted 44 messages in 13 minutes praising Republican candidates as 'MAGA warriors' and blasting their Democratic opponents.
He urged supporters to 'SWAMP the Radical Left Dumocrats with massive turnout'. The exit polls suggest the turnout arrived, but a significant portion of it arrived to vote against him.
The AP exit poll found that more than half of voters believe Trump is 'not a strong leader', does not 'fight for people like them', does not have 'the right priorities', and does not have 'the mental capability to serve effectively as president'.
His response to those findings was to call the polling questions insulting and the answers false.
What it means for the results
Historically, presidential approval ratings in exit polls have been strongly predictive of midterm outcomes.
When a president's approval is below 50%, the average seat loss for their party is 32 House seats, according to Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio.
At 38%, Trump is not just below 50%. He is below 40%.
He is lower than Obama in 2010, lower than Bush in 2006, lower than Clinton in 1994.
The only comparable number in modern midterm history is Bush in 2008, when Republicans lost 21 House seats.
Whether the results match the exit polls will become clear over the coming hours as counting continues. But the exit polls themselves have already told us what voters think of the president, and the answer, delivered across every major network and every major polling outfit simultaneously, is that 62% of the people who voted today disapprove of the job he is doing.