NEW POLL: Trump's approval stuck at record low as approval on prices sinks to -39
Our new Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll finds Democrats leading by 6 on the generic ballot, and Trump's approval on prices falling to its worst level yet
This article reports results from the March 2026 Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll. You can read our previous poll releases here. Subscribers to Strength In Numbers have access to additional visuals and a full archive of crosstabs here. Subscribers can suggest questions for future polls here, or via the comments section below!
President Donald Trump has had a bad month of news cycles (again). His new war against Iran is one of the most unpopular ever. The national average price of a gallon of gas is now $3.96, according to AAA — up over a dollar from $2.93 before the U.S. war in Iran began on Feb. 28, 2026. That price is now higher than at any point since 2022. Over a dozen American service members are dead in the fighting with Iran, and the path to resolving the conflict is unclear. And on March 18, the Federal Reserve held interest rates steady while raising its inflation forecast, citing the war and oil prices as key risks.
Amid this backdrop, our new March Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll finds Trump’s approval stuck at its lowest point since we began tracking it — with just 37% of U.S. adults approving of his job performance, essentially unchanged from February. He doesn’t have a single positive issue rating. And his approval on prices and inflation has cratered to net -39, the worst rating on any issue in the history of our poll.
Here are some more topline findings:
Headline poll findings
Generic ballot: Democrats lead Republicans 49% to 43% among registered voters — a 6-point margin. Democrats have led in every poll since we launched the monthly partnership in May 2025.
Presidential approval: 37% approve of Trump’s job performance; 60% disapprove (net -23). Unchanged since February.
Prices hit a new low: Trump’s approval on prices and inflation fell to net -39, down 4 points from February and the worst single-issue rating we’ve ever recorded
Border security goes underwater: Trump’s last remaining bright spot — border security — slipped from net 0 to net -2. He is now underwater on every issue we track.
Iran war: 58% of Americans say the war is a bad use of taxpayer dollars. 61% would oppose it if gas prices were to rise by $1 or more per gallon. Additionally, 26% of adults say the war will make Americans safer, vs 51% who say less safe.
Direction of country: Only 10% say things are going well in America. 52% say things are going poorly and major changes are needed. 33% say “things could be going better.”
Buyer’s remorse: 13% of Trump voters say they regret how they voted in 2024 — twice the rate of Harris voters.
More release details follow.
Note: This is the first of several articles releasing data from the March Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll. Last Friday’s Chart of the Week previewed the Iran war polling detailed more here, and more releases will dig into additional topics from the survey later this week. Subscribe to Strength In Numbers to get them in your inbox.
Methods statement: Verasight collected the data for this survey from March 16-18, 2026. The sample consists of 1,530 United States residents ages 18 and above. The data are weighted to match population benchmarks of age, race/ethnicity, sex, income, education, region, metropolitan status, partisanship, and past vote. The margin of sampling error is +/- 2.5%. Topline document prepared by G. Elliott Morris for Strength In Numbers. While Strength In Numbers had input on question wording, all other methodological decisions were made and carried out by Verasight to ensure independence of the data-generating process behind these results.
Democrats have led the generic ballot in every poll we’ve conducted
Among registered voters, Democrats lead the generic House ballot 49% to 43%, with 9% undecided. That’s a 6-point margin — down from the 10-point lead we recorded in February, but well within the survey’s margin of error. (The margin of error on a difference between two percentages is nearly double the MOE on each percentage alone, and comparing across two independent surveys pushes it even higher. A 4-point shift from one month to the next is likely noise.)
The real story of this trend is that Democrats have led the generic ballot in every single Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll since we launched the series in May 2025. The margin has bounced around between D+4 and D+10 depending on the month, but Democrats have never trailed. The average across months is D+7.
For context, the out-party typically gains ground on the generic ballot as a midterm approaches. As I wrote in my analysis of early 2026 midterm polling, the party out of power has gained an average of about 5 points between February and November in modern midterm cycles. If that pattern holds — and the starting point is already D+6 — Democrats would be looking at a margin well into wave territory by Election Day.
Trump’s approval on prices hits a new low, and he’s underwater on border security
Overall, 37% of adults approve of how Trump is handling the job as president, while 60% disapprove — a net rating of -23, statistically unchanged compared to our survey results from February. Trump’s approval has been stuck in this range since January.
For the second straight month, Trump doesn’t have a single positive issue rating. And the trend is negative for both his best and worst issues; he is losing his remaining edge on things like border security while falling even more behind on prices.
With consumers facing rising prices for gas and goods, Trump’s net approval on handling prices and inflation has plunged to net -39 — the worst rating on any single issue in the history of our poll. Just 28% of U.S. adults approve of how the president is handling inflation, while 67% disapprove.
And here is how Trump’s approval changed from our February to March polls:
Trump approval by issue (March vs February, net approve-disapprove):
Border security: 0 → -2
Crime and public safety: -12 → -10
Immigration: -15 → -13
Deportations: -15 → -14
Education: -19 → -20
Elections and democracy: NEW → -21
Foreign policy: -20 → -23
Jobs and the economy: -20 → -23
Trade with other countries: -21 → -24
Government funding and social programs: -26 → -25
Health care: -28 → -28
Prices/inflation: -35 → -39
Three shifts stand out:
Prices and inflation dropped another 4 points, from net -35 to net -39. This has been Trump’s worst issue since we started polling last year, and it keeps getting worse. With gas prices surging from the Iran war and ongoing tariff uncertainty, voters are punishing the president on the thing they care about most.
Jobs and the economy fell 3 points, from -20 to -23. Foreign policy also dropped 3 points to -23 — no surprise given the Iran war. And trade fell 3 points to -24, likely reflecting continued frustration with the tariff regime, which has contributed to the loss of 98,000 manufacturing jobs in Trump’s first year back in office.
Border security is now officially underwater. In January, border security was Trump’s one bright spot, with a net +4 approval rating. In February it fell to net 0. Now it’s -2. Trump enters April without a single issue where more Americans approve than disapprove of his performance.
These are small, within-margin-of-error shifts — but they suggest Trump is having trouble on both the best and worst issues for his presidency.
Voters’ top priorities couldn’t be further from the administration’s
Only 10% of Americans say things are going well in the country. Another 34% say things could be going better. And 52% — a majority — say things are going poorly and major, disruptive changes are needed. That number hasn’t budged since January, when we started asking our new modified version of the traditional “right track/wrong track” question.
What do voters want the government to focus on?
When asked to name their top three most important issues, the results looked almost identical to last month:
Prices/inflation: 56% of Americans pick this option — still the dominant concern by a wide margin
Jobs and the economy: 40%
Health care: 36%
Elections and democracy: 24% (new option this month — immediately 4th)
Immigration: 19%
Government funding: 18%
Crime: 18%
On almost every one of these top-tier issues, voters trust Democrats more than Republicans:
Prices/inflation: D+6
Jobs and the economy: D+5
Health care: D+18
Elections and democracy: D+10
Immigration: R+2
Government funding: D+18
Crime: R+7
Republicans maintain their leads on border security (R+16), crime (R+7), deportations (R+4), and immigration (R+2) — but those advantages keep narrowing. The GOP’s immigration trust lead, once a commanding double-digit margin, is now just 2 points.
When we asked which party voters trust to handle whatever they identified as their single most important problem, 45% said Democrats and 37% said Republicans. In February, voters gave Democrats an identical 8-point margin on trust to handle their most important issue.
We asked about elections and democracy for the first time
A quick note on a new issue to our tracking battery: elections and democracy.
Trump’s net approval on elections and democracy is -21 — 36% approve, 57% disapprove. That immediately makes it one of his worst-rated issues, worse than foreign policy, jobs, or trade. Among independents, just 25% approve, and 63% disapprove.
And voters care about it. 24% named elections and democracy as one of their top three most important issues, making it the fourth-highest priority after prices, jobs, and health care. On party trust, Democrats lead by 10 points (46% to 36%).
Most Americans say the Iran war is a bad use of taxpayer dollars
I covered our new polling data on Iran in a surprise post for last Friday’s Chart of the Week, so I won’t repeat all of it here. But the headline numbers belong in this main release document and are relevant for those who have not seen them.
58% of Americans say the war in Iran is a bad use of taxpayer dollars — including 44% who say “very bad.” Just 32% say it’s a good use of resources. And when we told respondents that the war could cause gas prices to rise by $1 or more per gallon, 61% said they would oppose the military action.
Additionally, 26% of adults say the war will make Americans safer, vs 51% who say less safe.
The war in Iran looks particularly politically/electorally dangerous for Trump, considering Americans’ existing anxiety about inflation. Gas prices are the most visible effect of the Iran war for most Americans. The war is making that worse.
Trump voters are twice as likely to regret their vote as Harris voters
Last spring, there was some Discourse in the political polling world over whether voters regretted how they voted in 2024. Back then, it looked like Kamala Harris would have won a hypothetical redo, based on disaffection among Trump voters and higher turnout among non-voters. I wanted to revisit this finding, so we re-asked this question in this month’s survey.
A deeper dive on this to come later this week, but here’s the topline: About 86% of 2024 voters said they did not regret their vote (or lack of) for president in 2024. Yet among those that did, there was a notable asymmetry: 13% of Trump voters said they regretted their vote, versus just 6% among Harris voters.
Among Trump voters who said they regret their vote, in 2015,
28% said they’d switch to Harris, 31% said they’d still vote for Trump, 28% said they’d vote for a third-party candidate, and 13% would not vote at all. So it’s not as though all of Trump’s regretful voters would flip to the other side. But there is still more comparative erosion among Trump’s voters than Harris’s.
How low can Trump go?
This is the second consecutive month at record-low approval for the Trump administration in the Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll. The president’s net rating has settled at -23, with no signs of good news ahead. Trump’s approval on prices — the issue voters care about most — has cratered to -39. Border security, his last remaining bright spot, is now underwater. And a majority say the Iran war — the main issue in American politics today — is a bad use of their tax dollars and going to make Americans less safe.
While they took a slight dip this month, Democrats have led the generic ballot in every poll we’ve conducted. Voters trust the party on the issues they rate as most important to them. And one in eight Trump voters says they regret their vote in 2024.
More polling results to come later this week.
You can download a full topline file, key crosstabs where they are mentioned in this article, and methodology statement using the link below:
The paywalled premium polling portal with crosstabs and more interactive graphics has been updated with these numbers.
If you have any questions about this poll or the release, please email polling[AT]gelliottmorris.com.
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How can Trump be under water on border security? Interactions on the border are drastically lower than in the Biden years and the news media (presumably FOX included) isn't reporting/showing waves of migrants flooding the US. Could it be that once a politician goes "south" on a few key issues (economy and war) then all the issues begin to flip?
43% will still support generic Republicans in the next election? I don’t understand that mind set at all. What happened to their critical thinking skills?