President Donald Trump’s approval rating among young voters has fallen sharply in multiple national polls conducted in April and May 2026, with declines of up to nearly 60 points since the start of his second term.
Major national surveys from The Economist/YouGov and AtlasIntel show a consistent pattern of collapse, with Trump’s net approval among Gen Z falling from positive or moderately negative territory in early 2025 to deeply negative ratings of between -42 and as low as -76 in recent polling.
In the chart above, that shift appears as a widening gap between Trump’s overall approval and the steeper downward trend among Gen Z, with younger voters moving more sharply into negative territory.
Younger voters were a key part of Trump’s 2024 coalition, narrowing Democratic margins even as they still leaned left overall.
Now, Gen Z appears to be breaking decisively against him, reshaping a critical battleground demographic ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
Why It Matters
Trump did not win young voters outright in 2024, but he made significant gains within the group compared to 2020, making them a more important part of his coalition heading into his second term.
A sharp reversal in that bloc risks weakening a key pillar of his electoral strategy and could have ripple effects in competitive congressional races in November.
YouGov Data Shows Sharp Recent Slide
Polling from The Economist/YouGov shows Trump’s standing with younger voters deteriorating rapidly in recent weeks.
A survey conducted April 17–20, 2026, among 1,707 U.S. adult citizens, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points, found Trump with a net approval rating of -16 overall, with 38 percent approving and 54 percent disapproving.
Among adults aged 18 to 29, approval stood at 28 percent and disapproval at 56 percent, for a net rating of -28.
Less than a month later, an Economist/YouGov poll conducted May 9–11, 2026, among 1,549 U.S. adult citizens, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 points, showed further deterioration.
Overall approval fell to 36 percent, with 58 percent disapproving, for a net rating of -22.
Among 18- to 29-year-olds, approval dropped to 25 percent while disapproval rose to 67 percent, pushing net approval to -42—a 14-point swing in the wrong direction in a matter of weeks.
Collapse Compared With Early Second-Term Standing
The scale of the decline becomes clearer when compared with the early days of Trump’s second term.
An Economist/YouGov poll conducted January 26–28, 2025, among 1,577 U.S. adult citizens, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.2 points, showed Trump with a net approval rating of +6 overall (49 percent approve, 43 percent disapprove).
Among voters aged 18 to 29, the same poll recorded a net positive rating of +5.
By May 2026, that had dropped to -42, representing a 47-point collapse in Trump’s net approval among Gen Z in the YouGov series.
This movement is clearly reflected in the chart above, where the Gen Z line starts slightly above zero in early 2025, then falls sharply into negative territory, ending far below the overall trend line.
AtlasIntel Data Shows Even Steeper Drop
Separate polling from AtlasIntel points to an even more dramatic erosion among younger voters.
An Atlas U.S. National Poll conducted December 15–19, 2025, among 2,315 U.S. adults, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points, showed Trump with a net approval rating of -20.3 overall and -38.6 among 18- to 29-year-olds.
A more recent Atlas poll conducted May 4–7, 2026, among 2,069 U.S. adults with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 points, found overall approval largely unchanged at -20.3.
Among younger voters, however, approval collapsed to just 11 percent while disapproval reached 87.6 percent, producing a net rating of -76.6.
That marks a 38-point drop in just five months for this age group.
Looking further back, an Atlas poll conducted January 21–23, 2025, among 1,882 U.S. adults, with a plus or minus 2 percentage point margin of error, found Trump at -17.4 among 18- to 29-year-olds.
Compared with the latest figures, that represents a decline of roughly 59 points since the start of his second term.
The second chart captures this divergence: while overall approval remains relatively stable across the series, the Gen Z line drops steeply, highlighting a widening gap between younger voters and the broader electorate.
A Widening Generational Divide
Across both the YouGov and AtlasIntel polling series, a consistent pattern emerges: younger voters are moving away from Trump more quickly and more decisively than the electorate as a whole.
In each chart, the line representing Gen Z falls more steeply than the overall trend, illustrating not just declining support but a deepening generational divide.
That divergence suggests Trump’s challenge is no longer simply one of broad approval, but of maintaining support within a demographic that had shown signs of movement toward him just two years earlier.
White House Response
White House spokesperson Davis Ingle has argued that current polling should be viewed in the broader context of Trump’s 2024 election victory, which he described as the clearest measure of public support.
“The ultimate poll was November 5th 2024 when nearly 80 million Americans overwhelmingly elected President Trump to deliver on his popular and commonsense agenda,” Ingle said, pointing to the result as a mandate for the administration’s policies.
Ingle said the White House remains focused on economic priorities including jobs, inflation and housing affordability, and framed the president’s record as historically significant.
“No other President in history has accomplished more for the American people than President Trump, who is working tirelessly to create jobs, cool inflation, increase housing affordability, and more,” he said.
He added that the administration expects its policies to continue taking effect, describing recent progress as “just the beginning as his agenda continues taking effect.”
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