President Donald Trump’s approval rating on his handling of the soaring cost of living has fallen so sharply that it has broken the scale of a pollster’s graph.
On Thursday, pollster G. Elliot Morris shared results from a Strength in Numbers/Verasight poll conducted in April, posting a chart on X tracking the president’s approval among voters across multiple issues. The graph covered areas including deportations, immigration, trade, healthcare, civil rights, democracy, and inflation/cost of living.
“Trump literally broke the scale of this graph on my data portal,” Morris wrote.
The line tracking “inflation/cost of living” dropped below every other category on the chart. While all issue areas showed declining approval since Trump began his second term last year, the cost-of-living metric fell the furthest.
The sudden plunge started on March 13, two weeks after the president began his war with Iran.
As of April 30, Trump’s approval rating on inflation and cost of living stood at negative 40.3 points, his lowest figure on the issue during his second term in office, according to the poll.
Sky-high gas prices are having a knock-on effect on Trump’s approval rating, as Americans struggle with the cost of living.
The president is even struggling to keep his own supporters happy, as oil prices continue to rise amid his deeply unpopular war with Iran. This week, U.S. gas prices hit record highs since the start of the conflict on February 28, reaching a nationwide average of $4.30 a gallon on Thursday, according to AAA.
Trump initially presented his military intervention in Iran as a regime-change operation, but it has since morphed into a rapidly expanding war that has led to the blockade of the vital Strait of Hormuz shipping route.
A retired U.S. Air Force captain who voted for Trump in the 2024 election slammed the president over soaring costs and the Iran war in an interview with the Associated Press last week.
Kathryn Bright, 60, said she feels “disgusted with myself” for backing Trump, whom she said she was initially drawn to for his pledges to provide better care to veterans, “stop wars,” and reduce the cost of living.
“I feel betrayed, like he was a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” Bright, who has several disabling medical conditions, said. “It’s like high school class president: ‘I’m gonna promise we are going to get pizza every single day,’” Bright said. “Then as soon as they get elected, they are like, ‘Oh, I lied.’”
The conflict is costing U.S. taxpayers almost $900 million a day.
When contacted for comment, White House spokesman Davis Ingle told the Daily Beast the “ultimate poll was November 5th 2024 when nearly 80 million Americans overwhelmingly elected President Trump 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,” he added. “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.”
