How do historical events (wars, economic crises, scandals) correlate with changes in presidential approval?
Executive summary
Presidential approval fluctuates with major events: polling shows President Trump at or near mid-to-low 30s–40s in 2025 during a long government shutdown and other crises, with Gallup reporting a 36% approval in late 2025 and Pew reporting 40% at another point in 2025 [1] [2]. Historical polling archives and aggregates — Gallup’s historical approval database and Nate Silver’s daily averages — are the standard tools journalists and analysts use to connect shocks (wars, scandals, recessions, shutdowns) to approval swings [3] [4].
1. Approval moves when the public perceives performance in crisis
Polls show approval falls during events that voters judge as political failure or economic pain: Gallup reported a 36% approval for Trump in November 2025 after a months‑long sequence of events including the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, which spanned into November [1] [5]. Pew’s tracking similarly placed Trump near 40% as Americans expressed negative views of his economic policies [2]. These contemporaneous numbers illustrate the basic mechanism: conspicuous crises that voters blame on government performance depress approval [1] [2].
2. Long, measurable historical series let analysts map shocks to swings
Researchers use continuous time series of approval — Gallup’s historical ratings and modern aggregates such as Nate Silver’s Silver Bulletin — to align peaks and troughs with specific events and infer correlations [3] [4]. These datasets provide day‑by‑day or month‑by‑month values that make it possible to show that approval often drops around scandals, wars, or economic downturns and can rebound after successful crisis management [3] [4].
3. Economic crises and shutdowns are especially visible drivers
The 2025 government shutdown, noted as the longest in U.S. history, created a salient national story; reporting links that shutdown to deteriorating approval for the incumbent in late 2025 — Gallup’s November poll covered the period when the shutdown became longest on record and found approval at a second‑term low [5] [1]. Pew’s analysis also ties approval to economic sentiment: when Americans view tariffs or cuts unfavorably, presidential approval sinks toward the 40% range [2].
4. Wars and foreign policy show mixed effects depending on outcomes and framing
Available sources document the presence of foreign conflicts and negotiated peace efforts in 2025 reporting but do not provide causal analysis tying specific military events to immediate approval changes in the polling cited; contemporaneous polling tools are however the standard way analysts would test those links [6] [4]. In other words: datasets exist to measure such effects [4], but current reporting in these sources does not lay out a clear event‑by‑event causal map for wars in 2025 [6].
5. Scandals depress approval but partisan sorting mediates the size of the drop
Historical Gallup material shows large differences across partisan groups and that scandals tend to reduce support among independents most dramatically; recent Gallup reporting shows Trump’s approval among independents fell to record lows in his second term while Republican loyalty remained relatively high, which is consistent with prior findings that scandals polarize more than they uniformly collapse support [1] [3]. Pew’s summaries likewise note wide gaps by religion and party in 2025 approval measurements [2].
6. Aggregation and weighting matter — different polls tell slightly different stories
Poll averages such as the Silver Bulletin weight pollsters differently to smooth house effects; Nate Silver’s service and Gallup sometimes report different point estimates because of methodology and sampling differences [4] [1]. Journalists must therefore rely on multiple sources: Gallup provides a long historical baseline [3], while aggregators give current, smoothed trajectories [4].
7. Limitations, alternative interpretations, and what’s not in these sources
The sources supplied document approval levels and tools to analyze them, and they record major 2025 events (shutdown, polls, executive action counts), but they do not include a comprehensive econometric analysis tying each event type to precise approval changes nor do they report counterfactuals showing what approval would have been absent the event [1] [5] [7]. Available sources do not mention, for example, a causal model estimating the percentage point effect of a scandal versus an economic shock in 2025 specifically (not found in current reporting).
8. Practical guidance for deeper analysis
For rigorous attribution, combine daily approval series (Gallup and Nate Silver’s averages) with coded event dates (shutdown start/end, major executive orders, public scandals, military operations) and run time‑series or difference‑in‑differences tests; the datasets referenced here are the place to start — Gallup’s historical approval center and Nate Silver’s Silver Bulletin — and contemporaneous polling snapshots from Pew and Gallup provide the event‑period benchmarks cited above [3] [4] [2] [1].
Sources cited: Gallup historical and November 2025 approval data [1] [3], Pew Research Center presidential approval topic pages [2], Nate Silver/Silver Bulletin approval aggregates [4], reporting on the 2025 government shutdown [5], and executive‑action record summaries used as context [7].