Most Americans blame Trump for high prices as midterms approach, a new AP-NORC poll finds

WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans are deeply frustrated with President Donald Trump's handling of the economy and rising prices, with most panning his performance and blaming his policies as higher costs threaten his party's chances in November.

A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that only 17% of U.S. adults approve of the Republican president's handling of the cost of living. Just 26% approve of his handling of the economy overall, marking a new low.

A majority, 65%, of U.S. adults now blame Trump’s policies for persistently high costs more than factors outside of his control, signaling growing weariness over his aggressive use of tariffs and continued unhappiness with the war with Iran.

The dismal numbers come just weeks before midterm elections that will determine whether Republicans maintain control of Congress and while Trump is hitting the campaign trail with an aggressive schedule of rallies. But Trump — who has asked voters to pretend that he is on the ballot as he tries to bolster turnout — remains deeply unpopular, with even many Republicans faulting him for failing to deliver on promised relief.

“I was hoping it would be better or different, but it’s not really good," said Robert Gault, 66, a retired factory worker from Bradford, Pennsylvania, who describes himself as a Republican.

“Our president, I thought, was going to help the country, and so far he has not really seemed to have done that with the economy or in general. He’s not really done what I was hoping he would," said Gault. "He said, 'Make America Great Again.' And I have not seen him do that.”

Over the last few months, Americans have grown more worried about being able to afford basics like groceries and gas. About half of U.S. adults now say they are “extremely” or “very” concerned about being able to fill their tanks, up from 39% in July. About half are also highly concerned about being able to afford food.

Prices are "extremely exorbitant. Just the cost of everything is going up as a result of fuel,” said Pedro Sanchez, 52, of Perris, California, who voted for Trump and works in law enforcement. “I used to have a lot more disposable income. I don’t have that any more. It’s gotten eaten up because of all these increases in the cost of everything.”

Trump’s current approval on the economy is a 14 percentage point drop from March 2025, just after he took office for the second time. His struggles on the issue mark a significant departure from his first term, when the economy was often a point of strength .

Trump spent much of the 2024 campaign hammering President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, Democrats, on inflation and promising to lower prices. Now, there's widespread disappointment with his performance. About 7 in 10 Americans say Trump’s handling of the cost of living has been “worse than expected." That includes roughly half of Republicans, who are also broadly concerned about being able to afford groceries and gas.

“Groceries are just like kind of out of control. It seems like everything is going up," said Bethany Lnenicka, 41, who operates a small farm in Fairfax, Iowa. “It's just one thing and the next week it's another thing. It's just insane. And of course your income doesn’t go up.”

A political independent who typically votes Republican and has voted for Trump three times, Lnenicka said she had hoped his second term would be more like his first.

“I just do not feel like it has gotten a lot better," she said.

About 6 in 10 Republicans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the cost of living, according to the new poll, up from about half in April.

“It definitely doesn’t feel like we have trended in the right direction," agreed Kristen Slaven, 41, a mental health therapist who lives in Gluckstadt, Mississippi, and typically votes Republican. She said Trump is focused on the wrong things.

“Obviously wars don’t help. When they’re necessary, I understand. But our focus on renaming bodies of water and pieces of land, that’s just stupid to me when people can't feed their family," she said.

“I had hoped that it would be better,” Slaven added.

Despite their frustration, most Republicans, 67%, say factors outside of Trump's control are more to blame for high prices.

“I think inflation is a very difficult thing to tackle," said Fred Naumann, 51, a Republican and longtime Trump supporter who lives in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Though he would like to see interest rates come down, Naumann, who works in the automotive industry, supports tariffs and the war with Iran, believing it was necessary.

Overall, however, most Americans, 69%, continue to say the war has not been worth fighting, up slightly from 64% in July. Only 28% approve of how Trump is handling Iran.

Americans are also unhappy with Trump's trade wars. Only about 3 in 10 U.S. adults approve of how he is handling trade negotiations with other countries, down from about 4 in 10 in March. And 64% say he has “gone too far” on imposing new tariffs on other countries, up from 58% in January.

Overall, the picture is not better. Only about 3 in 10 Americans approve of how Trump is handling his job as president. And about 6 in 10 say the country as a whole is “much” or “somewhat” worse off than when he began his second term.

The issue on which Trump maintains relative strength is border security, with about half of Americans saying they approve of his performance.

Trump's low grade on the economy rivals Biden’s 28% approval rating in June 2022, when there was record-high inflation during the COVID-19 pandemic.

But Americans were less likely to blame Biden in the lead-up to that year's midterm elections, a sharp contrast with the solid majority who hold Trump responsible now. In October 2022, 44% of Americans said Biden’s policies were responsible for high prices, while 55% blamed factors outside of his control.

Sanchez, a Republican who voted for Trump, blames him, at least in part.

“I think he has a lot to do with it. This war in Iran, the tariffs that he’s placing on other countries, obviously are affecting us. Those two things are things he’s been directly involved in that directly affect the economy,” he said. “I think with Biden, a lot of the stuff was outside of his control. It was all the COVID and how that affected everything else. I don’t think that there was much that he could have done."

He had high hopes for Trump's return. Now, things seem worse than under Biden.

Colvin reported from New York.

The AP-NORC poll of 2,140 adults was conducted Sept. 24-28 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.