Republican approval drops 21 points from 2025 high
Americans’ approval of the U.S. Supreme Court’s job performance has fallen to a record low of 33%, according to a Gallup poll released Tuesday. The prior low was 39% last year. The poll, conducted July 1-19, surveyed 1,200 adults and has a margin of error of 4 percentage points.
Gallup said the decline was largely driven by a drop among Republicans, whose approval of the court fell 21 points from 79% in 2025 to 58%. It is the lowest approval rating Gallup has recorded from Republicans since 56% in 2023.
Approval ratings from Democrats (12%) and independents (35%) stayed nearly unchanged from the previous year, Gallup said, remaining at near-record low points.
Gallup conducted the poll shortly after the end of the 2025-26 court term. The organization noted that some of the court’s rulings during the term were favorable to President Donald Trump and his policies, while other rulings went against the administration.
“Among the rulings favorable to the Trump administration were an expansion of the president’s ability to fire members of independent administrative agencies and upholding state laws limiting participation of female transgender athletes from women’s sports,” Gallup said. “But the court rejected the president’s legal basis for imposing tariffs without congressional authorization, struck down the president’s executive order limiting U.S. birthright citizenship and rejected, on due process grounds, the president’s attempt to immediately remove Federal Reserve Board member Lisa Cook.”
Gallup’s first poll measuring approval of the court, taken in 2000, found a 62% approval rating. Majorities tended to approve of the court’s job until 2010. After that, approval ratings settled at roughly 40%, largely because of increased partisan polarization, Gallup said.
From 2000 to 2010, party members differed by an average of about 18 percentage points on the court’s performance. Since 2010, the average partisan gap has widened to 32 points, according to Gallup.