Viewers of “The Source” saw the president’s polling problem on screen on Monday, August 31, 2026, when CNN host Kaitlan Collins displayed a graphic in which President Donald Trump’s net approval sat at minus 32 percentage points. The Republican Party itself registered minus 21 in the network’s own polling — roughly 11 points better than the president’s figure.

In nearly every poll the president trails by double digits, and he is performing worse than his party as a whole, Collins said. The gap matters, she argued, because Trump has made himself the main attraction of the fall campaign. Staging a special Republican convention ahead of the November midterms is an unorthodox move, and the plan makes his own performance in office an implicit ballot question in hundreds of separate House and Senate contests.

“Actually, some Republicans aren’t behind it because they think it’s taking them off the campaign trail,” Collins said of the convention plan. The gathering, according to New York Times journalist and CNN commentator Maggie Haberman, would pull candidates away from their home districts and hand Democrats fresh footage for attack ads.

A Number That Matches a Career Low

Overall approval for the president stood at 34 percent in the CNN poll behind that graphic, matching the worst mark of his career, a figure he recorded after his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in 2021. Strong disapproval reached 50 percent, the highest figure of his two terms, while 15 percent strongly approved — also a record. Only 31 percent said they had a favorable view of the Republican Party with him at its head. SSRS carried out the survey for CNN between July 23 and 27.

Private surveys, Haberman noted, do not always mirror what shows up in public data. “There is no polling where this president is popular,” Haberman said. Nor, she added, does a single poll put him in the clear on affordability.

Affordability Surfaces in the Oval Office

The word “affordability” came up over and over at the president’s Oval Office healthcare event that same day, Haberman noted, and that was despite Trump having brushed the issue off as a hoax on multiple occasions. She said Republicans in tough districts want to spend the fall talking about anything but that.

The money behind the convention effort deepens the risk. Reporting published in late August said the president intends to draw on his MAGA Inc. super PAC to fund a stretch of television spots promoting his own record; those spots are designed to run as a backdrop to House and Senate races.

As of September 5, Trump had also vowed to campaign in midterm races, with Republicans facing an increasingly competitive fight to keep control of Congress.

Other Pollsters Find the Same Trend

Republicans trying to protect narrow majorities in Congress on November 3 increasingly see the president’s political brand as a drag, and other pollsters find the same trend. A Reuters/Ipsos survey of 1,167 U.S. adults nationwide, conducted August 28-31, found 33 percent approving of how he is doing the job. Very enthusiastic about voting in November were 46 percent of Democrats, that same survey found, against 31 percent of Republicans.

The University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass) offered him no relief either. Its 1,000 respondents, questioned August 21-26, put approval of the president’s job performance at 32 percent, a point down from the university’s March survey. Disapproval climbed to 64 percent, close to two-thirds, with 54 percent saying they disapproved strongly. The poll carried a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.

Foreign policy is dragging as well. Asked about the war with Iran, 68 percent of UMass respondents said Trump is not handling it well; another 25 percent rated his handling somewhat or very good. Trump predicted roughly one month of fighting at the outset, and the conflict is now entering its seventh month.

Vice President JD Vance led a White House press briefing on September 3, the first in 40 days. Collins asked him: “In terms of the war and the timeline, given this administration has put timelines out there before… Will this war be over by the time of the midterm elections?” Vance replied: “I wouldn’t call it a war. Right now, there is no active shooting.”

Prices are causing him trouble too. Better than half of those polled by UMass said the president is not handling inflation well at all. Another 22 percent credited him with doing somewhat or very well. The personal consumption expenditures price index, the measure the Federal Reserve favors, put annual inflation at 3.7 percent in July, running 1.2 points higher than the January 2025 reading. Trump took office again that month on a promise to push down the cost of living.

Fresh quarterly party identification data from Gallup, reported September 5, shows 49 percent of voters identifying with or leaning Democratic against 39 percent Republican — a 10-point gap, the largest either party has held in Gallup’s quarterly tracking since 2015, compared with a four-point Republican advantage in the final quarter of 2024. The New York Times polling average now shows 38 percent approving of Trump’s job performance and 58 percent disapproving, down from 52 percent approval when he entered his second term in January 2025.

The White House Response

The president has used Truth Social to attack what he calls fake polls deployed by the press — a version of the claim he has made for years, that bad numbers are cooked up by people who oppose him. A day after the September 3 briefing, he posted: “The Radical Left Lunatics, Dumocrats, and Communists would rather have us LOSE the War in Iran, than have President Donald J. Trump WIN the War for America.”

Trump’s annoyance with Haberman has a long history. He unloaded on her in late August, mangling her name into a slur, after she and three colleagues reported that he intends to stay away from the Ground Zero ceremony marking 25 years since the September 11 attacks. He had reportedly hoped to speak at the event, but its organizer, the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, has not allowed speeches since 2012. That same reporting said he intends to be at the Irish Open that weekend.

Collins came back to the president’s agenda the following night, handing the September 1 broadcast of “The Source” over to his all-in bet on data centers. Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed joined the 46-minute episode live, his ongoing quarrel with Vance having grown personal — one more sign that, with November 3 approaching, the campaign is playing out mostly on Trump’s terrain and, more and more, over his numbers.