Trump's 'downright awful' approval dumps a 'big freaking problem' on GOP: data expert

President Donald Trump has passed an ignominious milestone in the first year of his second presidency.

The 79-year-old president returned to the White House in January 2025 after four years away, but CNN's Harry Enten presented data showing he quickly wore out his welcome and never earned it back.

"I took a look at all the polling, averaged it all together, and we have now reached the year mark," Enten said. "We have now reached the year mark in which he has a negative net approval rating. So we have been talking about this for a long period of time. According to my average of polls, what we've been looking at is every day since March 12, 2025, President Trump has been underwater, and we've been counting up the days. We've shown this slide a number of times, and we have now reached the point in which Trump has been swimming with the fishes for a year."

"So [a] not-so-happy anniversary," added CNN's John Berman. "Underwater overall, but really bad with one voting group."

"Yeah, really bad with one voting group," Enten agreed. "John, you know we have spoken about this – independents, independents, independents, the center of the electorate. We have been talking about how Trump has been just downright awful with them, and I decided we're going to look back and compare it to other presidents this century. At this point in their second term, compare it to George Bush, compare it to Barack Obama, and look at that – 38 points underwater at this point. That is worse than Obama by 20 points. That is worse than George W. Bush by double digits, and, of course, George W. Bush's second term went way off."

The reason for that unpopularity is that independents feel like the president is not focused enough on the issues they care about, Enten said.

"Are you focusing on the right issues?" Enten said. "Are you focusing on what people actually care about, and if you look right now, you look at a Fox News poll that recently came out, look at this. Say the Trump admin is focused on the wrong things, 60 percent overall say that the Trump administration is focused on the wrong things. Look at that – 78 percent of independents say that the Trump administration is focused on the wrong things."

Berman asked what impact that would have on Republicans in the midterm elections, and Enten said those numbers were a bad sign.

"John, I don't understand how that works," he said, especially if those numbers hold to the midterm elections. That's a big freaking problem."

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