Gallup is pulling the plug on tracking presidential approval ratings after 88 years—right as Donald Trump sits at a miserable 38 percent approval.
WHAT’S GOING ON: The polling giant announced it will no longer conduct its signature presidential approval surveys, calling the move part of “a broader, ongoing effort to align all of Gallup’s public work with its mission,” according to The Hill. A spokesperson insisted this is “a strategic shift solely based on Gallup’s research goals and priorities.”
Sure. And the timing is pure coincidence.
THE DETAILS: Trump’s current approval rating is among the lowest for any president in decades. And while Gallup hasn’t publicly claimed any pressure from the White House, Trump has made his feelings about unfavorable polling crystal clear. In December 2024, he sued the Des Moines Register, its parent company Gannett, and pollster Anne Seltzer after her poll showed Kamala Harris winning Iowa. In January, he went on a verbal rampage against The New York Times when their poll revealed independent voters had soured on him.
The pattern isn’t subtle: When polls make Trump look bad, Trump attacks the polls.
OF COURSE: Gallup hasn’t accused Trump of pressuring them, and there’s no evidence of direct threats. But in an environment where the president regularly goes to war with pollsters who deliver numbers he doesn’t like—including filing actual lawsuits—it’s fair to ask whether decades of institutional commitment to tracking presidential approval just happened to evaporate during the tenure of the most poll-obsessed, criticism-averse president in modern history.
WHY IT MATTERS: Gallup’s presidential approval tracking has been a bedrock of American political data since the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration. It provided a consistent, independent measure of how Americans viewed their leaders—data that journalists, historians, and voters relied on to hold presidents accountable. Losing that metric at this particular moment, with this particular president, creates a convenient gap in the public record.
Whether Gallup caved to pressure or genuinely decided to pivot its “research goals,” the result is the same: One less independent measurement of how badly this administration is doing.