Survey Says is a weekly series rounding up the most important polling trends or data points you need to know about, plus a vibe check on a trend that’s driving politics.
A man-made famine in Gaza
On Tuesday, a United Nations-affiliated organization released a damning report about the “worst-case scenario for famine” occurring in the Gaza Strip. Over 20,000 children have been treated for severe malnutrition, and at least 16 child deaths have been tied to starvation. Israel’s blockade of aid is the primary cause of the crisis, with the director-general of the World Health Organization referring to the mass starvation as “man-made.”
And yet, last Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu falsely claimed, “There is no starvation in Gaza”—a lie too brazen for even noted liar President Donald Trump.
“Some of those kids are—that’s real starvation stuff,” Trump said on Monday. “I see it, and you can’t fake that.”
And the vast majority of America sees it too. New polling from YouGov finds that 68% of Americans agree there is a hunger crisis in Gaza. That includes majorities of Democrats (84%), independents (65%), and Republicans (55%). Just 5% of Americans say there isn’t a crisis.
Pluralities of Americans also think Israel (46%) and the U.S. (43%) should be doing more to end the mass starvation.
All of this hits as fewer Americans than ever before support Israel’s military actions in Gaza, which have claimed the lives of 60,000 Gazans, including 18,500 children, though studies suggest the true number of deaths is higher.
Sixty percent of Americans disapprove of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, according to new data from Gallup. Only 32% approve of it, beating the previous low of 36% in March 2024.
Republicans are most supportive of Israel’s campaign, with 71% approving. But support has tumbled among independents (25%) and cratered among Democrats (8%). In the previous poll, conducted last September, support among independents and Democrats was 16 percentage points higher for each.
However, Gallup’s poll finished fielding on July 21, before the latest round of high-profile reporting on the budding famine in Gaza, and before a prominent Republican lawmaker called the crisis there a “genocide.” So it’s easy to imagine that support for Israel’s action in Gaza is even lower now.
Burning down the house
Under Trump, the Environmental Protection Agency no longer wants to protect the environment or the people living in it. On Tuesday, the agency announced it will move to rescind the primary legal grounds it has used to curb the emissions that fuel climate change.
But the Trump administration is doing this with virtually no public mandate.
Majorities of every demographic—men, women, every race, age group, and income bracket—want the government to maintain or expand its restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions, according to the latest YouGov/The Economist poll.
Well, every demographic save one. Only Republicans are below majority level, with just 36% saying the government should maintain or expand emissions restrictions. Twenty-nine percent want to see them reduced, and 18% want them eliminated—which, when combined, is also not a majority of Republicans.
Meanwhile, a plurality of every other demographic wants to see restrictions not just maintained but also expanded.
The same phenomenon repeats across other questions in the poll.
Is the government doing too much or not enough to fight climate change? A majority or plurality of every demographic says “not enough”—except for Republicans, 32% of whom say it’s doing “too much” and 38% of whom say it’s doing “about the right amount.”
Is the climate changing because of human activity, as the universal scientific consensus says is the case? A majority or plurality of every demographic thinks so—except for Republicans, a plurality of whom (46%) admits the climate is changing but claims that humans aren’t to blame.
One reason for this head-in-sand resistance to addressing climate change is that the issue cuts to the root of conservatism itself. To accept the gravity of the crisis requires people to see their actions as potentially harmful and to think outside of themselves. To address the crisis will require large-scale collective action—government action, to be specific. It will require us to change, which conservatism, in its very name, opposes.
But perhaps “conservatism” is a misnomer. Conservative actions on climate change, like those taken by Trump’s EPA, will lead to habitat collapse, environmental destruction, and the loss of human life. How does that “conserve” anything?
Through the looking glass
A new poll shows Trump with his worst net approval rating yet: +2 points. Fifty percent of voters approve of the job he’s doing as president, and 48% disapprove.
Wait, what?
Yes, while most polls show Trump’s approval rating in the dumps, not every poll does. The results above are from a poll conducted by two right-wing pollsters, InsiderAdvantage and the Trafalgar Group. The latter firm has notoriously secretive methods, but it retains just enough credibility that mainstream polling averages, like those from The New York Times and election analyst Nate Silver, don’t outright disregard them. (Thankfully, those averages are smart and adjust polls for firms’ partisan bias.)
However, these polls tell us something key about the right-wing media ecosystem: You gotta keep the big guy happy.
In the world of right-wing polls, Trump’s approval rating is underwater but just barely. In a simple average of polls in July, 47.4% of the country approves of Trump’s job as president, while 49.8% disapproves, according to polls that political analyst Mary Radcliffe aggregated and that Daily Kos identified as coming from Republican-aligned firms. (Radcliffe is a former colleague of mine at 538.)
The use of the decimal point in those numbers is important because in no month has this average of GOP-aligned polls shown that a majority of the country disapproves of Trump.
Meanwhile, in a simple average of all polls from all pollsters, Trump hit majority disapproval in April, likely due to his reviled tariff plan. More complex averages, run by the Times and Silver, show this as well.
In fact, as Trump’s average approval rating has sunk, Republican pollsters have broken more and more with the mainstream average, as if to lift their guy’s spirits. In January, Trump’s average net approval rating stood at nearly +10 points among Republican pollsters and about 2 points better than among all pollsters. By April, though, the average difference between Republican pollsters and the overall aggregate was more than 5 points. In June and July, it’s been almost 7 points.
“I have the best numbers I’ve ever had,” Trump said on July 23, as the scandal around his administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case hit fever pitch. “You know, it’s amazing I watch people on television: ‘Well, what about Donald Trump’s polling numbers?’ Yeah, they’re the best numbers I’ve ever had.”
These GOP-affiliated pollsters may be what Trump has in mind, but not even they show the supposed results he’s rambling on about.
Any updates?
-
It’s August 2025, the perfect time to fret about hypothetical polling for the 2028 presidential election. A new poll from Emerson College finds that former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is best positioned to take on Vice President JD Vance, if those two were to run and the election were held today. However, Buttigieg lags Vance by 1 point, but that’s within the margin of error. Meanwhile, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and California Gov. Gavin Newsom trail Vance by 3 points each. However, in each hypothetical head-to-head, about 13% of voters are undecided. It’s anyone’s race!
-
Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City, won his primary after relentlessly messaging on the city’s cost-of-living woes—and new polling confirms that this messaging was integral to his victory. Among those who voted for Mamdani, 89% were swayed to do so because of his plans to lower costs, according to a poll Data for Progress conducted on behalf of the Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project. Other issues that swayed votes: Mamdani’s plan to tax the wealthy and take on corporations (86%), his support for Palestinian rights (62%), and his personality and energy (60%).
-
Another week, another batch of Epstein polling. While Daily Kos covered the topline takeaways in a new YouGov/Economist poll earlier this week, the same poll also found that the vast majority of Americans (64%) oppose Trump potentially pardoning Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, which Trump, being a bad man with a broken soul, is considering. Only 4% think he should pardon the convicted sex trafficker. All this comes as another new poll—this time from The Washington Post and SSRS—finds that only 16% of Americans approve of how Trump is handling the Epstein files issue. In fact, only 43% of self-described MAGA Republicans support him on the matter.
Vibe check
Newly 79 years old, Trump is expected to exit the White House in January 2029 as the oldest president in the nation’s history, at age 82 and seven months. And if most Americans got their way, he’d be the oldest president the nation will ever have too.
A newly released survey from YouGov, conducted in March, finds that 53% of Americans would limit people 80 years of age and older from being president, while only 25% say there should be no age limit, the current practice.
Republicans lead the way in thinking there should be no limit too, with a plurality of 36% thinking as much. Meanwhile, only 12% of Democrats and 27% of independents agree.
Of the four activities YouGov polled—being president, driving a car, voting in federal elections, and gambling legally—the presidency was the one that voters most wanted to restrict to younger age groups.
However, the poll also finds that 1 in 10 Democrats and 1 in 5 Republicans and independents think there should be no minimum age requirement on getting married, so Americans’ views on age limits can be questionable, to say the least.