A new Financial Times poll puts President Trump’s approval rating at 33%, the lowest mark he has recorded since FT started running this particular survey, and the drop is not limited to swing voters or independents.
The poll, conducted August 28 through September 1 among 1,914 registered voters, found approval down three points over the past month alone. Even more striking is what happened among Trump’s own base: approval among Republican voters fell to 72%, an anti-record for this poll series and a signal that grumbling has spread beyond the usual suspects.
The soft spot voters keep pointing to is money. A large majority of respondents rejected the administration’s approach to trade and tariffs, and they tied that policy directly to the rising cost of living rather than treating it as some abstract Washington fight. Two-thirds of those surveyed said the economy is headed in the wrong direction, and 57% said the administration’s policies have hurt their own financial well-being personally, not just the country’s numbers on paper.
Why this poll, specifically
Polling on a sitting president bounces around depending on methodology, sample, and the week’s news cycle, so any single survey deserves some skepticism. But the FT poll’s internal trend line is the more useful signal here: it is the same questionnaire, the same pollster relationship, run repeatedly since Trump took office, and it has now recorded its lowest reading yet. That kind of within-poll erosion is harder to wave away than a one-off number.
It also lines up with other recent coverage, including CBS News and Yahoo News pieces describing approval hovering near or at record lows for his second term, and it tracks with a separate Reuters/Ipsos poll from mid-August that had already put him at 33%. Different pollsters, different weeks, similar destination.
What it means politically
A president losing ground with his own party’s voters is a different problem than losing ground with everyone else. Independents drifting away is baked into most modern presidencies by this point in a term. Republicans souring on tariffs and cost of living, in a poll that specifically flags 72% approval as a low point for GOP respondents, is the number that tends to worry members of Congress heading into their own next elections.
Neither the White House nor the Financial Times immediately offered additional comment beyond the published poll figures at the time of this report.
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Sources: Yahoo News · CBS News
