A year into his second administration, Americans’ views of President Donald Trump – already more negative than positive – have continued to slip.

• Trump’s approval rating stands at 37%, down from 40% in the fall.
• By more than two-to-one, Americans say the administration’s actions have been worse than they expected (50%) rather than better (21%).
• Only about a quarter of Americans today (27%) say they support all or most of Trump’s policies and plans, down from 35% when he returned to office last year. That change has come entirely among Republicans.

A new Pew Research Center survey of 8,512 U.S. adults, conducted Jan. 20-26, also finds that – across six key qualities and abilities needed to serve as president – more Americans express little or no confidence in Trump than say they are extremely or very confident in him.

Confidence is down on all six measures since last year, particularly among Republicans.

Related: How Americans See Immigration Officers’ Behaviors and Civilian Actions

Trump’s qualities and abilities as president

Today, 34% of Americans say they are extremely or very confident that Trump has the leadership skills needed to serve as president. A larger share (51%) are not too or not at all confident. Another 14% are somewhat confident.

Similarly, about half say they are not too or not at all confident Trump has the mental fitness (52%) or physical fitness (50%) to do the job. Roughly three-in-ten express confidence on these measures.

Even fewer say they are confident that Trump respects the country’s democratic values (25% are extremely or very confident) or that he picks good advisers (25%).

Americans express the least amount of confidence in Trump to act ethically in office. Just 21% are extremely or very confident he does this, while 60% express little or no confidence.

While overall confidence in Trump’s ethics in office was already relatively low last February (29%), it has declined 8 percentage points since. And nearly all of that drop has come among Republicans: At the beginning of Trump’s second term, a 55% majority of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said they were confident that Trump acts ethically in office, but that share now stands at 42%.

There’s a similar pattern across all six qualities we asked about.

For example, 60% of Republicans said last February that they were extremely or very confident Trump respects the country’s democratic values – it’s 52% today. And while 66% of Republicans say he has the mental fitness to do the job, that’s down from three-quarters last year.

Democrats’ confidence in Trump on these measures remains very low.

For full trend on each of the qualities asked on the survey, refer to chart appendix.

Support for Trump’s policies

There has also been a significant decline over the last year in the share of adults who say they agree with Trump’s plans and policies.

• Last year, 35% said they supported all or most of his plans, 17% supported some of them and 47% supported only a few or none.
• Today, 27% say they support all or most, 20% support some and 52% support few or none.

The decline in support has come exclusively among Republicans. Last year, 67% said they supported all or most of Trump’s plans and policies. Today, 56% do.

Very small shares of Democrats say they support his policies. Most (87%) support only a few or none.

Related: Few Americans support Trump’s proposed takeover of Greenland.

For full trend details, refer to the appendix.

Do Republicans in Congress have an obligation to support Trump?

Today, 38% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say that congressional Republicans “have an obligation to support Trump’s policies and programs because he is a Republican president.” But a far larger share (61%) say GOP members of Congress do not have an obligation to support Trump if they disagree with him.

The share saying Republicans in Congress do not have this obligation is up since last year, from 55%.

Other key findings from the survey

• Democrats overwhelmingly say their congressional leadership should stand up to Trump. Today, 82% (up from 70% last year) want to see their leaders pushing back against Trump, even if that makes it harder to address problems. A smaller majority of Republicans (61%) say Trump should stand up to Democratic leaders. This is similar to their views a year ago.
• Nearly half of Americans (47%) now say Trump will be an unsuccessful president in the long term. This share is up 14 points since last year, with most of this change occurring among Democrats. A majority of Republicans continue to say Trump will be successful in the long run.
• Trump’s approval among Republicans is now 73% – down slightly since September. Older Americans, White adults and those without a college degree continue to approve of his performance more than others. See detailed tables for additional demographic breaks.

This report is a collaborative effort based on the input and analysis of the following individuals:

Research team

Jocelyn Kiley, Director, Political Research
Steven Shepard, Associate Director, Political Research
Hannah Hartig, Senior Researcher
Baxter Oliphant, Senior Researcher
Gabe Borelli, Research Associate
Andrew Daniller, Research Associate
Andy Cerda, Research Analyst
Joseph Copeland, Research Analyst
Shanay Gracia, Research Analyst
Ted Van Green, Research Analyst

Communications and editorial

Nida Asheer, Senior Communications Manager
Maya Pottinger, Communications Associate
David Kent, Senior Editorial Specialist
Anna Jackson, Editorial Specialist

Graphic design and web publishing

Peter Bell, Associate Director, Design and Production
Alissa Scheller, Senior Information Graphics Designer
Reem Nadeem, Digital Producer
Beshay Sakla, Associate Digital Producer

Methodology

Andrew Mercer, Senior Research Methodologist
Dorene Asare-Marfo, Senior Panel Manager
Dana Popky, Associate Panel Manager
Arnold Lau, Research Methodologist

The American Trends Panel survey methodology

Overview

Data in this report comes from Wave 185 of the American Trends Panel (ATP), Pew Research Center’s nationally representative panel of randomly selected U.S. adults. The survey was conducted from Jan. 20 to Jan. 26, 2026. A total of 8,512 panelists responded out of 9,302 who were sampled, for a survey-level response rate of 92%.  

The cumulative response rate accounting for all stages of nonresponse and attrition is 3%. The break-off rate among panelists who logged on to the survey and completed at least one item is 2%. The margin of sampling error for the full sample of 8,512 respondents is plus or minus 1.4 percentage points.

The survey includes oversamples of non-Hispanic Asian adults and adults ages 18-to-29 in order to provide more precise estimates of the opinions and experiences of these smaller demographic subgroups. These oversampled groups are weighted back to reflect their correct proportions in the population.

SSRS conducted the survey for Pew Research Center via online (n=8,272) and live telephone (n=240) interviewing. Interviews were conducted in both English and Spanish.

To learn more about the ATP, read “About the American Trends Panel.”

Panel recruitment

Since 2018, the ATP has used address-based sampling (ABS) for recruitment. A study cover letter and a pre-incentive are mailed to a stratified, random sample of households selected from the U.S. Postal Service’s Computerized Delivery Sequence File. This Postal Service file has been estimated to cover 90% to 98% of the population.¹ Within each sampled household, the adult with the next birthday is selected to participate. Other details of the ABS recruitment protocol have changed over time but are available upon request.² Prior to 2018, the ATP was recruited using landline and cellphone random-digit-dial surveys administered in English and Spanish.

A national sample of U.S. adults has been recruited to the ATP approximately once per year since 2014. In some years, the recruitment has included additional efforts (known as an “oversample”) to improve the accuracy of data for underrepresented groups. For example, Hispanic adults, Black adults and Asian adults were oversampled in 2019, 2022 and 2023, respectively.

Sample design

The overall target population for this survey was noninstitutionalized persons ages 18 and older living in the United States. It featured a stratified random sample from among ATP members who previously completed Wave 183. Non-Hispanic Asian adults and adults ages 18 to 29 were selected with certainty. The remaining panelists were sampled at rates designed to ensure that the share of respondents in each stratum is proportional to its share of the U.S. adult population to the greatest extent possible. Respondent weights are adjusted to account for differential probabilities of selection as described in the Weighting section below.

Questionnaire development and testing

The questionnaire was developed by Pew Research Center in consultation with SSRS. The web program used for online respondents was rigorously tested on both PC and mobile devices by the SSRS project team and Pew Research Center researchers. The SSRS project team also populated test data that was analyzed in SPSS to ensure the logic and randomizations were working as intended before launching the survey.

Incentives

All respondents were offered a post-paid incentive for their participation. Respondents could choose to receive the post-paid incentive in the form of a check or gift code to Amazon.com, Target.com or Walmart.com.  Incentive amounts ranged from $5 to $20 depending on whether the respondent belongs to a part of the population that is harder or easier to reach. Differential incentive amounts were designed to increase panel survey participation among groups that traditionally have low survey response propensities.

Data collection protocol

The data collection field period for this survey was Jan. 20 to Jan. 26, 2026. Surveys were conducted via self-administered web survey or by live telephone interviewing. 

For panelists who take surveys online:³ Postcard notifications were mailed to a subset on Jan. 20.⁴ Survey invitations were sent out in two separate launches: soft launch and full launch. Sixty panelists were included in the soft launch, which began with an initial invitation sent on Jan. 20. All remaining English- and Spanish-speaking sampled online panelists were included in the full launch and were sent an invitation on Jan. 21.

Panelists participating online were sent an email invitation and up to two email reminders if they did not respond to the survey. ATP panelists who consented to SMS messages were sent an SMS invitation with a link to the survey and up to two SMS reminders.

For panelists who take surveys over the phone with a live interviewer: Prenotification postcards were mailed on Jan. 16. Soft launch took place on Jan. 20 and involved dialing until a total of four interviews had been completed. All remaining English- and Spanish-speaking sampled phone panelists’ numbers were dialed throughout the remaining field period. Panelists who take surveys via phone can receive up to six calls from trained SSRS interviewers.

Data quality checks

To ensure high-quality data, Center researchers performed data quality checks to identify any respondents showing patterns of satisficing. This includes checking for whether respondents left questions blank at very high rates or always selected the first or last answer presented. As a result of this checking, two ATP respondents were removed from the survey dataset prior to weighting and analysis.

Weighting

The ATP data is weighted in a process that accounts for multiple stages of sampling and nonresponse that occur at different points in the panel survey process. First, each panelist begins with a base weight that reflects their probability of recruitment into the panel. These weights are then calibrated to align with the population benchmarks in the accompanying table to correct for nonresponse to recruitment surveys and panel attrition. If only a subsample of panelists was invited to participate in the wave, this weight is adjusted to account for any differential probabilities of selection. Because respondents to this wave were sampled from among respondents to Wave 183, the weights were also adjusted to account for nonresponse to Wave 183.

Among the panelists who completed the survey, this weight is then calibrated again to align with the population benchmarks identified in the accompanying table and trimmed at the 1st and 99th percentiles to reduce the loss in precision stemming from variance in the weights. Sampling errors and tests of statistical significance take into account the effect of weighting.

The following table shows the unweighted sample sizes and the error attributable to sampling that would be expected at the 95% level of confidence for different groups in the survey.

Sample sizes and sampling errors for other subgroups are available upon request. In addition to sampling error, one should bear in mind that question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of opinion polls.

Dispositions and response rates