US presidents' approval ratings when they left office, ranked

For nearly 90 years, the Gallup presidential approval polls measured Americans’ public opinion on the president’s job performance, but now, they’re a thing of the past.

In February, Gallup, the analytics and polling company that pioneered presidential approval ratings, confirmed they were ending the practice, which, since the 1930s, had asked Americans: “Do you approve or disapprove of the way [the current president] is handling his job as president?” The company cited a “shift in corporate strategy” as the driving force behind the decision, The New York Times reported.

Instead, Gallup will “focus more on issues and policy polling.” In Gallup’s most recent poll, conducted in early December 2025, 36% of respondents said they approved of Trump’s performance, down from 47% in early 2025 after he took office for the second time.

In the poll, 59% of respondents said they disapproved of his handling of the presidency, slightly down from 60% in late November 2025.

While the Gallup polls may no longer be conducted, other polling firms continue to release approval-rating polls.

The American Research Group, a New Hampshire-based pollster, asked the exact same question as Gallup and found that 30% of respondents approved of Trump’s job performance in mid-June, while 66% disapproved.

It also found that 70% of respondents disapproved of the president’s handling of the economy, a defining issue during the 2024 election.

A larger poll conducted by the Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research in mid-June put his approval rating at 37%, while 62% disapproved.

During his first term, Trump was the first president since Gallup began tracking presidential approval in the 1930s to never have a job approval rating above 50%.

The American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara, compiled the final Gallup ratings for each presidential term over the past 70 years — from Harry Truman to Joe Biden — and indicated how popular each leader was when they left the Oval Office.

See how the last 13 US presidents ranked in their end-of-term polling, from the lowest to the highest final approval ratings.