Topline results and crosstabs for the poll can be found at www.umass.edu/poll

A new national University of Massachusetts Amherst Poll finds President Donald Trump’s approval rating has fallen to 33%, the lowest rating of his second term in office. The poll of 1,000 respondents, conducted March 20-25, finds Trump’s approval down five points from July 2025 and 11 points lower than last April.

“In the midst of skyrocketing prices, significant declines in the stock market, an unpopular war in the Middle East, a government shutdown that has led to lines at airports and nationwide protests against his presidency, it is no shock that President Donald Trump’s approval ratings have taken a hit in our latest polling,” Tatishe Nteta, provost professor of political science at UMass Amherst and director of the poll, says. “What is surprising, and of likely grave concern to the White House, are the dips in support from the very groups that helped Trump take back the presidency in 2024. Among men, working class Americans and African Americans, Trump’s approval ratings have dropped by close to 20 points since April 2025. Similar drops in support are also seen among moderates (down 18 points) and independents (down 13 points), key constituencies in Trump’s victory and in the upcoming midterm election.”

“These latest poll numbers on public approval of President Trump are brutal,” says Jesse Rhodes, professor of political science at UMass Amherst and co-director of the poll. “Fully 62% of Americans somewhat or strongly disapprove of Trump’s job performance. The reason? Americans grade Trump harshly on the most prominent issues facing the country, especially on bread-and-butter economic issues. Seventy-one percent say Trump is not handling inflation well and 61% say he’s not handling the issue of jobs well. Tariffs were supposed to be one of Trump’s signature issues, but they are a public relations disaster with almost two out of three Americans (64%) giving him a negative grade. When it comes to public opinion, economic concerns usually dominate, and Americans’ harshly negative views of Trump’s economic leadership are a major cause of his declining poll numbers.”

In the wake of nationwide protests against his immigration policy and the killing of American citizens by ICE, Nteta also notes that immigration, once one of President Trump’s greatest strengths, has quickly become one of the president’s most pressing vulnerabilities.

“According to our polling, 6 in 10 Americans believe that President Trump has not handled immigration well, a dramatic reversal from April 2025, when half of Americans viewed Trump’s handling of the issue of immigration positively,” Nteta says. “In the face of these poll results, Trump may have to reconsider his campaign promise to conduct the ‘largest deportation program in American history’ or risk alienating a public increasingly weary of his harsh solutions to the problem of undocumented immigration.”

“The public also disapproves of Trump’s handling of voting rights, with 54% of Americans saying he is not handling this issue well,” Rhodes adds. In response to Trump’s recent demands, Congress is considering legislation that dramatically increases the paperwork required to vote, and would likely make it much more difficult for millions of Americans to cast a ballot.

“Although combatting the specter of ‘voter fraud’ is very popular among Republicans, it isn’t among most Americans,” Rhodes says. “Trump has been demanding legislation that would address the alleged problem of voter fraud, even though there is no evidence of systematic fraudulent voting in the United States. The unpopularity of the issue – and the public’s negative evaluation of Trump’s handling of voting rights – probably helps explain why his favored legislation is stalled in the Senate.”
 

Disapproval over Iran War

Raymond La Raja, professor of political science at UMass Amherst and co-director of the poll, notes that the new University of Massachusetts Amherst Poll found significant disapproval over Trump’s decision to wage war on Iran.

“Nearly two-thirds (63%) of Americans say the president is handling Iran poorly, including 52% who say ‘not well at all.’ This appears to create a weak foundation for Trump to attempt to escalate the war,” La Raja says. “These views are sharply polarized, though, with 71% of Republicans saying Trump is handling Iran well, compared to only 1% of Democrats. Nearly 9 in 10 (89%) strong MAGA supporters say he is handling Iran well, and 82% say that attacking Iran is putting America first, but that support drops sharply among other Trump voters, revealing a clear divide within the Republican coalition. Strong MAGA voters appear to rally behind the president, while more conditional supporters are far more skeptical, suggesting potential cracks beneath the surface.”

“The war with Iran is virtually unprecedented in that there was almost no congressional or public deliberation before the onset of hostilities and, consequently, Trump did not rally public support behind the war,” Rhodes adds. “In retrospect, this appears to be a serious strategic error.”

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“On the campaign trail, Trump repeatedly vowed to avoid new wars and focus on domestic priorities,” Nteta says. “Yet his attack on Iran has drawn criticism from prominent conservatives, including Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene, who argue the move breaks his ‘America First’ promises. Despite this, many in the MAGA coalition remain supportive.”

Should Trump decide to escalate the war with an attempted troop invasion, however, the new poll indicates that he’ll likely face even greater pushback from the American populace.

“There’s a striking gap between what Americans want and what they expect,” La Raja says. “Very few support a ground war with Iran, but many think it’s inevitable. Less than 1 in 10 Americans (8%) support sending ground troops, but roughly 4 in 10 (41%) think it will happen anyway, which shows low confidence in Trump’s original claim that no ground troops will be sent in. Among the MAGA base, there’s no real gap between preference and expectation – they are still largely opposed to sending troops in, but they appear more comfortable than other Trump voters with escalation and more confident in the president’s decisions. Thirty percent say Trump should send troops – compared to just 17% of Trump voters overall – and roughly the same percentage (29%) thinks he’ll actually send them in.”

“In what is likely unwelcome news in the White House, majorities of men and women, young and middle aged, working class, middle class and wealthy, and people of color all exhibit opposition to the war,” Nteta says. “With the war dividing Americans, it comes as no surprise that President Trump seems to be actively seeking an off-ramp and an end to the conflict with Iran.”

“During his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump promised that he would ‘put America first’ and keep the U.S. out of foreign conflicts,” Rhodes says. “As president, however, Trump has embraced an aggressive foreign policy, overthrowing the government of Venezuela, attacking Iran, and we find that his bellicose approach to foreign affairs is broadly unpopular. Majorities of Americans oppose overthrowing the government of Cuba (52%), making Greenland part of the U.S. (59%), or annexing Canada (69%). In fact, they’re not just broadly unpopular, they’re unpopular among Trump’s core constituencies – only minorities of Republicans and conservatives support these objectives. The fact that Trump’s proposals are unpopular even with his base underscores just how unpopular these measures are.”
 

The lingering shadow of Jeffrey Epstein

The new University of Massachusetts Amherst Poll also found that Trump’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein continues to haunt his presidency.

“A clear majority of Americans believe the government is not being fully transparent about the Epstein case, and that extends beyond partisan lines, although Democrats and independents are more likely to feel this way,” La Raja says. “Fifty-nine percent (48% strongly and 11% somewhat) think the administration is hiding information. The fact that independents are closer to Democrats on whether information is being withheld makes this a politically dangerous issue for Trump and the Republicans.”

“Trump and his supporters may have hoped that public concerns about Trump’s relationship with disgraced sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein would fade with the Justice Department’s release of millions of pages of documents relating to Epstein, but this hope has gone unfulfilled,” Rhodes says. “Two-thirds of Americans say that Trump is not handling the release of information concerning Epstein well, with 54% saying he is not handling it well at all. Negative perceptions of Trump’s handling of the Epstein affair are widespread – large majorities of virtually every demographic group say Trump is not handling the issue well, and only bare majorities of Republicans and conservatives say he’s handling the release of information about Epstein well. Clearly, this issue is not going away anytime soon.”

“What’s striking is that Americans agree on accountability – overwhelming majorities (82%) want Epstein’s associates prosecuted, including 78% of Republicans – but they sharply disagree on whether the truth is being hidden,” La Raja says. “Just 22% of Republicans think info is being hidden and 46% of them say the Epstein issue is ‘old news.’ Solid MAGA voters largely dismiss the idea of an Epstein cover-up – just 14% believe it’s a cover-up – but other Trump voters are much more open to the idea, including those who are somewhat less-attached to the MAGA brand. So there’s strong support among Republicans for pursuing wrongdoing, but many downplay the importance of the Epstein scandal.”
 

Regret among Trump voters?

The new University of Massachusetts Amherst Poll marks the third time respondents were asked whether they regretted their votes – or lack thereof – in the 2024 presidential election.

“Are we seeing cracks in the Trump coalition?” Nteta asks. “With much attention being paid to ‘regretful’ Trump voters in the media reports, since April 2025 we have asked Americans to revisit their choice for president in 2024. While we find only a small number (5%) of one-time Trump voters indicating that they regret their vote and would have voted differently, this is up from only 1% of voters in July 2025 and 2% in April 2025 who expressed a similar level of regret. More concerning for President Trump and his allies is the decrease in confidence among Trump voters, with just 62% feeling ‘very confident’ in their vote, a 12-point decrease since April 2025.”

Overall, 83% of Trump voters still express confidence in their 2024 choice in the latest poll, down from 93% who expressed confidence in their vote last April and 88% who expressed confidence in their choice last July. An additional 12% of Trump voters said they either have “mixed feelings” or “some regrets” about their 2024 votes, or would rather have not voted, up from 6% from last April.

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“While most Republicans, and virtually all MAGA Republicans are still standing by their man, there are some signs of erosion in support among those who returned him to the White House,” says Alexander Theodoridis, associate professor of political science at UMass Amherst and co-director of the poll. “Since we started asking Trump voters whether they regret their votes about a year ago, the percentage telling us they are still ‘very confident’ in their vote has dropped from about three-quarters (74%) to less than two-thirds (62%). All told, 1 in 5 (21%) Trump voters tells us they have some concerns about their 2024 vote. Seven percent have mixed feelings and 1 in 10 Trump voters tell us they might or would vote differently or not vote at all if they had it to do over again.

“This is hardly the mass exodus anecdotal media accounts of Trump voters might imply,” Theodoridis says, “but it is a meaningful indication of weakening support given the narrowness of Trump’s 2024 margin of victory. And, it is certainly not an encouraging sign for Republican fortunes as we head into the 2026 Midterm elections.”

Ultimately, Nteta says the results of the new poll do not bode well for the man occupying the White House. 

“Less than two years into his presidency, and it simply looks as if President Trump is on the outs with the American public,” Nteta says. “Whether Trump will be able to get back in the good graces of a public that has soured on this presidency will likely determine not only the outcome of the 2026 midterm election, but assessments of the overall success of his second presidency.”
 

Methodology

This University of Massachusetts Amherst Poll of 1,000 respondents nationally was conducted by YouGov March 20-25. YouGov interviewed 1,072 total respondents who were then matched down to a sample of 1,000 to produce the final dataset. The respondents were matched to a sampling frame on gender, age, race and education. The sampling frame was constructed by stratified sampling from the full 2023 American Community Survey (ACS) 1-year sample with selection within strata by weighted sampling with replacements (using the person weights on the public use file).

The matched cases were weighted to the sampling frame using propensity scores. The matched cases and the frame were combined, and a logistic regression was estimated for inclusion in the frame. The propensity score function included age, gender, race/ethnicity, years of education, region and home ownership. The propensity scores were grouped into deciles of the estimated propensity score in the frame and post-stratified according to these deciles.

The weights were then post-stratified on 2024 presidential vote choice and a four-way stratification of gender, age (4-categories), race (4-categories) and education (4-categories) to produce the final weight.

The margin of error of this poll is 3.5%.

Topline results and crosstabs for the poll can be found at www.umass.edu/poll