Trump underwater in 47 states and DC, new projection finds

Polling Map Shows President’s Job Approval Negative Across Nearly Every State

Cybersecarmor.com – The political landscape surrounding the White House has grown increasingly hostile at the state level, with a fresh YouGov/Economist projection revealing that a majority of voters in 47 of the 50 states — plus the District of Columbia — now disapprove of how President Donald Trump is handling his duties. Only three states remain where more residents endorse the president’s performance than condemn it, a shrinking enclave of support that underscores just how broadly the administration’s popularity has eroded across the country.

Three States Still in the President’s Corner

The handful of states where net job approval remains positive are Wyoming, Idaho, and West Virginia. Wyoming leads the group with a net figure of +14, followed by Idaho at +9 and West Virginia at +6. Each of these three states carried Trump in the 2016, 2020, and 2024 presidential elections, making them reliable Republican strongholds even as the rest of the map has turned against the sitting president.

The persistence of positive numbers in these particular states is not surprising given their long-standing alignment with conservative candidates. Wyoming’s mining and ranching economy, Idaho’s rural conservatism, and West Virginia’s coal-country politics have historically produced some of the most dependable Republican margins in the nation. Yet even within those states, the margins have narrowed compared with earlier cycles, suggesting that the broader national decline is not entirely contained to blue states.

The Bottom of the Barrel

At the opposite extreme, the District of Columbia posted the single lowest net approval score in the country at −83. Maryland and Vermont tied for the lowest state-level figures, each registering −50. All three jurisdictions are historically Democratic bastions that backed former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, and their deeply negative scores reflect both partisan loyalty and frustration with the current administration’s policy direction.

The spread between the most favorable and least favorable jurisdictions — a gap of nearly 100 points between Wyoming and D.C. — illustrates how sharply the country is divided along partisan and geographic lines. States that voted for Harris in 2024 are now registering some of the most punishing disapproval scores in modern polling history, while the handful of states that backed Trump in every recent cycle remain, however thinly, in positive territory.

National Polling Confirms the Downward Trajectory

The state-level picture mirrors what national surveys have been showing for months. A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on August 17 found that only one in three Americans approved of the president’s job performance — the lowest mark the administration has recorded in that tracker since Trump returned to the White House in 2025. The figure places the president well below the approval levels typical of mid-term-year presidents and signals that the administration faces a steep uphill battle in any near-term electoral contest.

Major polling averages, which smooth out the noise of individual surveys, continue to place Trump in negative net territory nationally. While no single poll tells the whole story, the convergence of multiple independent trackers on sub-50 approval figures leaves little room for optimistic interpretation on the administration’s side.

Iran War Anxiety Compounds the Problem

The polling slump arrives at a moment when a large share of the American public is anxious about the duration of the ongoing military confrontation with Iran. In the same August 17 Reuters/Ipsos survey, 80 percent of respondents said they believed U.S. involvement with Iran would persist for an “extended period of time.” The concern cuts across party lines: 87 percent of Democrats and 71 percent of Republicans shared that expectation.

When a war drags on and the public grows weary, presidents historically see their approval ratings slide. The combination of a protracted foreign conflict, domestic economic pressures, and partisan polarization creates a particularly toxic environment for incumbents seeking to maintain popular support. The fact that even a substantial minority of Republicans — the president’s own party — expect a long war suggests that the administration’s messaging on the conflict has not yet reassured its base.

White House Silence

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the polling data as of Friday, August 21. In past cycles, administrations have either dismissed unfavorable polls as partisan noise or pointed to specific policy achievements to counteract negative numbers. The absence of a rapid response may itself signal that the administration is struggling to find a compelling counter-narrative to a polling environment that has turned uniformly hostile across most of the country.

What the Map Means Going Forward

A president whose net approval is negative in 47 states faces an extraordinary challenge in the midterm elections, where House seats are drawn from districts that track state-level sentiment closely. Even in states where the governor or senator is a Republican, deeply negative presidential numbers can depress down-ballot turnout for co-partisan candidates. The three states that still show positive approval — Wyoming, Idaho, and West Virginia — are all reliably Republican in congressional races, meaning the administration’s remaining electoral cushion is thin and geographically concentrated in the Mountain West and Appalachian coal regions.

For voters in the other 47 states and the capital, the polling data suggests that the administration’s most urgent task is not merely to defend its record but to identify which specific policies or actions are driving the disapproval and whether any of them are reversible before the next electoral cycle. Until that diagnosis is made public, the map will continue to read as a near-universal rebuke.