Trump isn’t the worst: These world leaders have a worse disapproval rating than the U.S. president
While Donald Trump’s disapproval rating has trended upwards since he returned to office, he’s doing significantly better than some of his global counterparts.
Donald Trump’s disapproval rating has ticked up since he took office for a second term as U.S. president - but statistics show the 79-year-old is far from being the world’s least popular leader.
What is Trump’s approval/disapproval rating?
According to the latest data shared by the analytics firm Morning Consult, President Trump had a 50% disapproval rating as of October 7. 43% of Americans said they approved of the job he is doing.
Other sources place Trump’s latest disapproval rating higher than that. Pollsters YouGov, for example, say 54.3% of the U.S. electorate gave the president’s performance a thumbs-down, as of October 6.
YouGov notes that Trump had a 46% disapproval rating on January 28 this year - a week after he was sworn in as the U.S.’s 47th U.S. commander-in-chief.
This negative trend in popularity comes as polls indicate a significant proportion of Trump voters have concerns about the direction of the Republican’s second presidency.
In a recent study by NBC News - in collaboration with the research firms Engagious and Sago - over half of a group of young Americans who voted for Trump in 2024 said they disapproved of the president’s performance.
The voters, all in the 18-29 age group, cited concerns over areas such as Trump’s crackdown on immigration; his aggressive policy of tariffs on imports; and his administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.
In an August poll by researchers at the University of Massachusetts, meanwhile, 31% of Trump voters of all ages could not say they felt very confident they had been right to choose him in last November’s presidential election.
So how does Trump stack up against other world leaders?
President Trump’s disapproval score may be on an upward curve, but he is faring significantly better than the leaders of several other major nations, per Morning Consult.
Most notably, French President Emmanuel Macron is struggling with a disapproval rating of 79%, while the leaders of the United Kingdom and Germany have both wasted little time in accruing disastrous popularity figures.
Elected by a landslide in July 2024, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has a 67% disapproval rating, per Morning Consult. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who succeeded Olaf Scholz in May this year, gets a negative performance score from 70% of the population.
Most unpopular world leaders:
- 1. Emmanuel Macron, France: 79%
- 2. Petr Fiala, Czech Republic: 74%
- 3. Friedrich Merz, Germany: 70%
- 4. Keir Starmer, U.K.: 67%
- 5. Cyril Ramaphosa, South Africa: 63%
How does Trump compare to other second-term presidents?
Trump’s most recent approval rating - placed at 43% by Morning Consult and 43.1% by YouGov - is just below average for a post-war, second-term U.S. president, according to data collected by the polling company Gallup.
Since 1945, the eight other presidents who have returned to the White House have, between them, had an average approval rating of 47.6% across their second tenure.
Democrat Bill Clinton enjoyed the top average rating, with an average score of 60.6% between 1997 and 2001.
Three re-elected presidents found themselves down in the 30s: Harry Truman (36.5%); George W. Bush (36.5%); and Richard Nixon (34.4%), who resigned in August 1974, 19 months into his second term, over the Watergate scandal.
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