FT-Focaldata poll puts Trump at 33 percent with diesel at a record $5.85

A Financial Times poll conducted by Focaldata found that 33 percent of registered US voters approve of Donald Trump's performance as president, the lowest figure in the series since the paper began asking the question in May and three points below last month. The survey landed less than two months before the November midterm elections and on the same weekend that the national average price of diesel set a record of $5.85 a gallon.

Almost two-thirds of registered voters said the economy was heading in the wrong direction. Fifty-seven percent said they were worse off financially under this presidency. Among Republican voters, only 53 percent backed Trump's handling of jobs and the economy, an eight-point drop from the previous month. A majority of those polled rejected his trade and tariff policy. The FT's own write-up named cost of living, not foreign policy, as the main weight on the numbers.

Diesel at $5.85 is a warehouse and trucking number as much as a passenger-car number. The FT tied the spike to the war with Iran and to disrupted fuel flows. Trump said on Friday that the Iran fighting is a relatively minor operation, backing comments from his vice president. Voters in the Focaldata sample were pricing the fuel dock, not the briefing.

Other polls this year have sat in the same band. A Reuters/Ipsos survey in mid-June had Trump at 36 percent overall, with cost-of-living approval at 24 percent. An NPR/PBS News/Marist poll in June put overall approval at 36 percent and economic approval at 33 percent, Marist's lowest reading on that question since 2019. A Marquette Law School national series in late July had approval at 40 percent among adults, with economic approval at 30 percent, inflation approval at 24 percent and gas-price approval at 21 percent. The FT-Focaldata 33 percent is therefore not an isolated print. It is the bottom of a range that has lived in the mid-to-high 30s for months.

Republicans need that range to move before November. Super PACs aligned with Trump and with Elon Musk have already raised their midterm spending. Trump has said he is willing to open MAGA Inc's reported $400 million war chest after pressure from his own party. Money does not change the diesel board. It also does not change the 57 percent who told Focaldata they are poorer than they were.

The political risk sits in the Republican sample as much as in the national one. An eight-point drop in Republican approval of Trump's economic handling is a base problem, not an independent-voter problem. Midterm turnout models assume the president's party is less enthusiastic than the opposition. A president at 33 percent overall, with his own voters cooling on the economy, is the classic setup for seat loss in the House.

None of this is a forecast of November. It is a description of the weekend the FT published the number. Witkoff and Kushner were in Kyiv. US forces and Iran were trading strikes around Hormuz. Diesel made a record. The poll asked a job-approval question and got the lowest answer in its own short series. That is the fact the White House has to campaign against, or ignore, for the next eight weeks.