Trump claims '99% Approval Rating' as polls show near-record lows

President Donald Trump late Saturday amplified a Team Trump graphic urging supporters to vote in next month's midterms as if he were on the ballot: "When every MAGA Patriot votes like President Trump's on the ballot, we will WIN!" In his own Truth Social caption, he added: "99% Approval Rating, highest ever. The Fake News never learns!"

Not a single public survey of all adults or registered voters supports 99% as a national approval rating. Not one.

Pew's latest survey of 5,062 adults, taken Sept. 28-Oct. 4, put Trump's job approval at 30%, with 68% disapproving — one point above its January 2021 low in Pew's presidential trend. NBC's polling average has him at 38% approve and 59% disapprove.

Against those low numbers, the late posts recast weak national polling as a turnout message for core supporters: ignore pollsters, back the president, and vote.

About two hours before the claim, Trump posted a CNN segment he’d shared before, in which CNN’s chief data analyst, Harry Enten, discusses data showing 99% of the "MAGA GOP" group backing Trump over Kamala Harris in 2024. In the segment, Enten puts Trump’s 2026 approval with the MAGA GOP at 98%.

That 98% is the closest figure to Trump's claim in his posts that night — though crucially still one point off. The group is just one slice of voters: Trump’s most ardent supporters. The president did not make that distinction in his Saturday night post.

The Nov. 3 elections will decide all 435 House seats and 33 regularly scheduled Senate seats. A Reuters/Ipsos poll taken Sept. 30 to Oct. 5 found that 30% of 2024 Trump voters were "very enthusiastic" about voting, compared with 48% of Harris voters. Among all voters who said they were enthusiastic, 62% said opposition to Trump was driving them, while 36% said support for him was.

Trump has made the "pretend I’m on the ballot" pitch before. In an Oct. 3 campaign video, Trump said: "I'm asking you to pretend I'm on the ballot." At an Oct. 9 rally in Syracuse, New York, he put it less politely: "Please pretend I'm on the freaking ballot, will you?"