Donald Trump’s approval rating shifts with parents

President Donald Trump's standing with parents has likely declined further in recent weeks, new polling suggests.

The latest survey from Echelon Insights, conducted August 13 to 17, found that 40 percent of parents of children under 18 strongly or somewhat approve of how Trump is handling his job as president, compared with 59 percent who strongly or somewhat disapprove, giving him a net approval rating of -17.

This represents a decline from the same survey conducted between July 9 and 13, which found that 44 percent of parents approved, compared to 55 percent who disapproved, giving Trump a net approval rating of -11.

The July and August poll surveyed about 1,000 voters; however, the July poll included only 247 parents of children under 18, and the August poll 234.

Costas Panagopoulos, a professor of political science at Northeastern University, cautioned against reading too much into a relatively small pool of parent voters, but told Newsweek the polling could potentially point to parents becoming increasingly concerned by Trump's economic and foreign policy choices.

Overall, Trump's rating among all voters improved slightly between July and August, though it remains deeply underwater.

In the July survey, 38 percent of respondents said they approved of the job Trump is doing, while 61 percent disapproved, giving him a net approval of -23. In the August poll, 40 percent said they approved of his job performance, while 59 percent disapproved, giving him a net approval of -19.

The poll comes as Trump’s approval rating is underwater on all four central pledges that won him a second term in 2024: seal the border, avoid new foreign wars, fix the economy and clean up Washington, D.C.

The White House has repeatedly dismissed the president's low approval ratings and pointed to his 2024 election victory as the clearest measure of public support for Trump's agenda.

The president's party typically loses seats during midterm elections. Given Trump's unpopularity in much of the country, even small shifts in support could have significant consequences for Republicans who are fighting to preserve their slim majorities in the House and Senate in November’s midterm elections.

Democrats, meanwhile, hope to pick up enough seats to win control of Congress and thwart the president's agenda for the remainder of his second term.

Experts say the shift may stem from parents' concerns about the economy, inflation and the war with Iran.

“One explanation is that parents are especially tuned in to concerns about the economic implications of Trump's policies as well as his foreign policy choices like the war against Iran,” Panagopoulos told Newsweek.

“Parents are naturally disposed to thinking carefully about policies that can affect their lives and their children’s safety and security. It's conceivable that parents are especially attuned to the impact of Trump's policies and that dimmed views about them are reflected in the president's sagging ratings among parents.”

Panagopoulos and other experts cautioned against overemphasizing the shift, given the small polling sample.

“Statistically, note that when you start slicing up a sample of, say, 1,000 respondents, you can start to get some funky results,” Grant Davis Reeher, a professor of political science at Syracuse University, told Newsweek.

Assuming the poll has captured a real shift, inflation “being felt more acutely [by parents] might have something to do with it,” Reeher said. “More so, I’d hazard that this demographic includes those who are more concerned about the war in Iran, and more critical of it.”

He added: "I’d tend to think that when you have children, your lens on war changes a bit, because you can now imagine your own children fighting in one. You become more risk-averse regarding issues that might impact them (except, apparently, for the national debt). When you add that to a conflict that doesn’t involve an obvious, direct threat to the U.S., that effect would become amplify, I’d again think."

Paul Kellstedt, a professor of political science at Texas A&M University’s Bush School of Government and Public Service, said the findings may represent a “statistical anomaly.”

The shift is “not particularly large,” he told Newsweek. He pointed to the “inherent uncertainty that comes from using relatively small samples of data to learn about large underlying populations.

“In other words, if we took another random sample this month from the same population, it would likely not show that same shift.”

In response to inquiries about polling, White House spokesman Davis Ingle previously told Newsweek that the Americans who voted for Trump gave him a mandate to “deliver on his popular and commonsense agenda.”

"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," Ingle said.

"The President has already made historic progress not only in America but around the world, and this is just the beginning as his agenda continues taking effect."

Contact Newsweek editors on this story: John Fitzpatrick and Sam Wilson.