President Donald Trump's approval rating held at 32% in a Reuters/Ipsos poll completed on Monday, 9 November, leaving him near the lowest rating of his political career less than a week after Republicans lost control of both chambers of Congress in the midterm elections.

The result was unchanged from the two previous Reuters/Ipsos polls, conducted in late October and early November. It sits just one percentage point above the 31% recorded in mid-October, the lowest of Trump's career in politics, according to Reuters.

Cost of living drags on Trump's ratings

The poll points to household costs as the central problem for the White House. Only 21% of Americans approved of Trump's handling of the cost of living, and 25% approved of his stewardship of the economy more broadly.

Reuters linked the pressure on household finances to rising prices, including sharply higher fuel prices since Trump launched a war on Iran in February. An NBC News exit poll cited by USA Today found that 75% of midterm voters described the economy as either “poor” or “not so good”.

Immigration remains Trump's strongest issue

Immigration remained Trump's strongest major issue, with 38% approval, well above his ratings on the economy and the cost of living. Among Republicans, 81% backed his approach to immigration, compared with 50% who approved of his handling of the cost of living.

Other polling painted a similar picture. An Economist/YouGov survey released on Saturday, 7 November, put Trump's approval at 36%, down three points from 29 October. As of Monday, the RealClearPolitics average put his approval at 38.9%, against 59.2% disapproval, USA Today reported.

A lame-duck Congress and a changed Washington

The poll was published as Congress returned to Washington for a six-week lame-duck session. Democrats won both chambers in the 3 November midterms and will take control when the new Congress is sworn in on 3 January 2027, but Republicans still hold the gavel until then. The session is expected to run until Christmas, with a break for Thanksgiving, and government funding under the current stopgap runs out on 11 December.

Trump has also reshaped his own team since the vote, replacing chief of staff Susie Wiles with Stephen Miller, the architect of much of the White House's domestic policy agenda. Miller began the role on Monday, 9 November.

What the poll measured

The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online across the United States from 6 to 9 November, after the 3 November elections. It gathered responses from 1,705 adults and carries a margin of error of about two percentage points.

A poll is a snapshot of opinion at one moment, not a measure of how people voted. But the latest reading underlines the scale of the political challenge facing Trump as he heads into the final two years of his second term with Democrats set to control Congress from January.