Trump hits 7-year low in new national poll as Biden approval climbs

About a month after launching his 2024 presidential campaign, former President Donald Trump’s standing with voters has hit its lowest point in over seven years, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday.

Just 31% of registered voters surveyed hold a favorable view of Trump, versus 59% who have an unfavorable opinion of him, the poll found. That’s the lowest rating Trump has received since July 2015, shortly after he launched his first presidential bid, according to Quinnipiac.

Trump’s declining marks were even worse among independent voters, the poll showed. Just 25% have a favorable view of him, versus 62% who have an unfavorable opinion — Trump’s lowest rating among that group since Quinnipiac first asked the question in May 2015.

While 70% of Republican voters still have a favorable view of Trump, 20% said they saw him in an unfavorable light — marking Trump’s lowest favorability reading from his party’s voters since March 2016, per Quinnipiac.

The poll, which surveyed 1,456 registered voters from last Thursday to Monday, has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.6 percentage points.

“Former President Trump’s post presidential announcement numbers are heading in the wrong direction,” Quinnipiac University Polling Analyst Tim Malloy said in a press release. “You would have to go back at least six years to find less support for him from Republican, independent and American voters as a whole.”

Meanwhile, the survey found President Joe Biden’s job approval rating, while still underwater, had jumped to its highest rating since September 2021.

Just 43% of respondents said they approved of Biden’s work, while 49% disapproved — an increase from last month’s Quinnipiac poll, which showed his job approval rating at 36% and his disapproval at 55%.

Biden, who defeated Trump in 2020, has not yet announced whether he will run again in 2024, though he has signaled he would like a Trump rematch. Majorities of registered-voter respondents told Quinnipiac they would not like to see Trump or Biden as a 2024 presidential nominee.

Quinnipiac’s offering is the latest in a string of recent polls showing Trump’s support either wilting or cratering in the wake of the November midterm elections. Trump has come under fire from some fellow Republicans after many of his handpicked candidates lost high-profile races, helping Democrats expand their Senate majority in a cycle that was expected to favor the GOP.

At the same time, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a rising star in the Republican party who easily won reelection last month, has taken a sizeable lead over Trump in some early polls of the 2024 Republican primary fight.

A Wall Street Journal poll earlier Wednesday, for instance, showed DeSantis beating Trump by double digits among likely GOP primary voters, 52% to 38%. That result, which carried a margin of error of plus-or-minus 6 percentage points, came even as DeSantis has not announced a White House bid and just signed on to another four-year gubernatorial term. Quinnipiac’s latest poll did not ask respondents about DeSantis.

Asked for comment, a source close to Trump noted that a recent Morning Consult poll showed Trump holding court as the frontrunner, backed by 49% of potential GOP primary voters compared with 31% who favored DeSantis.

Trump, who is so far the only major candidate to announce a presidential bid for 2024, has spent little time if any on the campaign trail. Instead, his latest run for the White House has been marked by controversies and losses: He suggested on social media that the Constitution could be terminated in order to put him back in power, before backtracking on the comments; he dined with Ye, the rapper who has recently voiced a wide array of anti-Semitic remarks, and a white supremacist. His preferred candidate in the Georgia Senate race, Herschel Walker, lost to Sen. Raphael Warnock in a December runoff election, and two subsidiaries of his business empire, the Trump Organization, were convicted of crimes including tax fraud.

In a social media post earlier Wednesday, Trump said he would make a “major announcement” on Thursday. The post was accompanied by a video of Trump saying, “America needs a superhero,” along with a brief animation showing a cartoon version of Trump shooting lasers from his eyes in front of Trump Tower.