CNN host Kaitlan Collins put a punishing number in front of “The Source” viewers on Monday, August 31, 2026: a graphic showing President Donald Trump’s net approval at minus 32 percentage points. His own party fared better in the network’s polling, at minus 21, leaving the president roughly 11 points behind it.
In nearly every poll, Collins said, Trump trails by double digits and runs behind the Republican Party as a whole. That gap carries real consequences, she argued, since Trump himself has decided to be the fall campaign’s headline act. He wanted a special Republican convention staged ahead of the midterms in November 2026, an unorthodox plan that quietly converts his record in office into a ballot question across hundreds of individual House and Senate races. That convention opens Wednesday, September 9, at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, with Trump headlining both nights and closing it Thursday.
Not everyone in the party is sold on it. “Actually, some Republicans aren’t behind it because they think it’s taking them off the campaign trail,” Collins said of the convention plan. New York Times journalist and CNN commentator Maggie Haberman said the gathering would pull candidates away from their home districts and also hand Democrats fresh footage for attack ads.
A Figure That Ties His Career Low
Overall approval in the CNN poll behind that graphic came in at 34 percent. That figure matches his career worst, a number he last recorded in 2021 after his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. Strong disapproval reached 50 percent in the same survey, the highest figure of his two terms, while strong approval sat at 15 percent, also a record. With him at its head, the Republican Party drew a favorable view from just 31 percent of Americans polled. SSRS carried out the survey for CNN between July 23 and 27.
Private surveys, Haberman noted, do not always mirror what turns up in public data. “There is no polling where this president is popular,” Haberman said. She added that not a single poll puts him in the clear on affordability.
Affordability Comes Up in the Oval Office
At the president’s Oval Office healthcare event that same day, Haberman noted, “affordability” was said over and over — this from a president who dismissed affordability as a hoax before pivoting to it in January. Candidates in tough districts, she said, want to spend the fall talking about anything but that, and those Republicans face bigger risk from the money behind the convention effort.
The president plans to tap his MAGA Inc. super PAC for a run of television spots touting his own record, built to play as a backdrop to those House and Senate races, according to reporting published in late August.
Trump vowed in the first days of September to campaign personally in 35 House and Senate races over the final month, with the party facing an increasingly competitive battle to retain control of Congress.
Other Surveys Point the Same Way
Republicans defending narrow congressional majorities on November 3 increasingly see the president’s political brand as a drag. Reuters/Ipsos surveyed 1,167 U.S. adults nationwide from August 28-31 and put his job approval at 33 percent. It also showed 46 percent of Democrats describing themselves as very enthusiastic about voting in November, compared with 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, down a point from the university’s March survey. Disapproval climbed to 64 percent — close to two-thirds — with 54 percent saying they disapproved strongly. The results carried a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.
Foreign policy is dragging as well. Some 68 percent of UMass respondents said Trump is not handling the war with Iran well, while 25 percent rated his handling as somewhat or very good. Now in its seventh month, the conflict has run far past the four to five weeks Trump projected at the outset, though he said at the time the United States had “capability to go far longer than that.”
At a White House press briefing on Thursday, September 3 — the first in more than 40 days, led by Vice President JD Vance — Collins asked, “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.”
The day after that briefing, on September 4, Trump posted on Truth Social: “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.” Collins drew attention to the contrast with Vance’s remarks by resharing a CNN colleague’s post on X that carried the Truth Social statement.
Prices are causing him trouble too. Some 57 percent of those polled by UMass said he is not handling inflation well at all; 22 percent, by contrast, credited him with doing somewhat or very well. The personal consumption expenditures price index, the measure the Federal Reserve favors, registered annual inflation of 3.7 percent in July 2026. That sits 1.2 points higher than the 2.5 percent recorded in January 2025, when Trump took office again on a promise to push down the cost of living.
The Response From the White House
The president has used Truth Social to attack what he calls fake polls deployed by the press. It is a recycling of the argument he has made for years: that bad numbers are cooked up by people who oppose him.
His annoyance with Haberman has a long history. A story she wrote with three colleagues revealed that he intends to stay away from the Ground Zero ceremony marking 25 years since the September 11 attacks, and in late August he unloaded on her, mangling her name into a slur. He had reportedly hoped to speak at the event, but the organizer, the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, has not allowed speeches since 2012. The 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 an episode of “The Source” over to his all-in bet on data centers. Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed appeared live on the 46-minute episode, 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. The numbers have not improved since: a Focaldata survey for the Financial Times, of 2,178 adults polled between August 28 and September 2, put his approval at 32 percent, a new low.
