A new UMass Amherst poll has put President Donald Trump’s approval ratings at 38%, some of the lowest approval numbers reported during his second term in office.
The poll, conducted nationally to 1,000 respondents between July 25-30, found 58%, or roughly six of every 10 Americans, expressed disapproval of Trump’s job in office. It’s seven points higher than the previous UMass poll and although slightly higher than other recent polls, it’s in keeping with recent trends, such as a recent Economist/YouGov poll that showed Trump with a 55% disapproval rate.
“This might be his low point,” said Raymond La Raja, a professor of political science at UMass Amherst and a co-director of the poll, in an interview with the Gazette. “There’s clearly a decline and we see it in polls that other people are doing, he’s definitely been going down.”
Since becoming president in January, Trump and his administration has moved with lightning speed to remake the federal government, implementing a series of tariffs that have upended global trade, implemented rapid staff cuts to federal offices in partnership with Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and ramped up efforts to deport immigrants through the Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) agency.
La Raja said that presidential administrations typically see a drop in approval ratings when they move swiftly to implement policy, especially in highly partisan atmospheres.
“People start getting nervous about such rapid change,” La Raja said. “His [Trump’s] numbers for immigration has gone down, and that was one of his big issues.”
Though Trump was elected on a platform of cracking down on illegal immigration, La Raja said people had expressed disapproval of ICE’s methods, which have included detaining people inside of courtrooms and targeting high school students. In Massachusetts, several case such as the detention of Tufts University graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk and Milford High School student Marcelo Gomes da Silva led to national public backlash.
“Majorities do not like ICE’s methods. They’re starting to say, this is not what we asked for,” La Raja said. “The immigration issue, which used to be a strong point, is affecting people who may have voted for him.”
The UMass poll showed that while 69% of Americans supported deportation of undocumented immigrants with criminal records, only one-third supported the deportations of other undocumented immigrants who work, pay taxes, have no criminal record or who have children in the U.S. More than 60% of Americans support a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, and a majority agreed that constitutional rights such as the right to an attorney and protection from cruel and unusual punishment should apply to undocumented immigrants, according to the poll.
Trump’s overall decrease in approval was noted across different age, race, class and gender groups. A notable group Trump lost ground with was with men, who Trump had previously cultivated support from.
“Trump has cultivated a ‘masculine’ reputation and sought to build support among American men but, strikingly, we find that support for Trump has deteriorated most substantially among members of this group,” said Jesse Rhodes, another co-director of the poll, in a statement put out by the university announcing the results. “In April, Trump enjoyed approval from 48% of men, compared with 39% of women. Now, only 39% of men express approval of Trump, compared with 35% of women.”
La Raja said Trump’s support remained strong among core Republican voters, but that too could change due to the continued controversy of the administration’s decision to close the case regarding Jeffrey Epstein, the billionaire serial sex offender whose death in 2019 engrossed the public with conspiracy theories based on Epstein’s elite connections. The Department of Justice’s sudden announcement in July that Epstein had killed himself and that there was no “client list” used for blackmail has the potential to cut right into Trump’s base, La Raja said.
“This is something that’s a real danger zone for his power,” he said. “Republicans aren’t going to challenge him, but if they start hearing from their base voters, people who vote in the primaries, you already see a lot of rumblings with starting to oppose him.”
Alexander MacDougall can be reached at amacdougall@gazettenet.com.
