Gallup Ends 90-Year Presidential Approval Ratings Amid Strategic Shift in Focus

Gallup, the pioneering polling firm that turned presidential job-approval numbers into a staple of American politics, said this week it would stop publishing those ratings after nearly 90 years, ending one of the country’s longest-running political barometers just as President Donald Trump sits at a 36% Gallup approval rating. thehill +1 The move, effective this year, will also halt Gallup’s public favorability ratings for political figures. axios

The organization, founded by George Gallup in 1935, has asked Americans some version of “Do you approve or disapprove of the way the president is handling his job?” since the late 1930s, producing a continuous series that has framed everything from Harry Truman’s postwar slide to George W. Bush’s 90% rally-around-the-flag spike after the September 11 attacks. nytimes +1 Gallup said the decision is a strategic shift in focus, not a response to any one administration or set of numbers. thehill +1

Why Gallup Says It’s Walking Away

Gallup executives framed the change as a move to concentrate on areas where the firm believes it can be more distinctive, such as global attitudes, workplace trends and long-term social indicators, rather than a metric that has become ubiquitous. Leadership approval ratings are now “widely produced, aggregated and interpreted, and no longer represent an area where Gallup can make its most distinctive contribution,” the company said in a statement. axios

Justin McCarthy, a Gallup spokesperson, said the firm is “focused on providing analytics that inform and drive meaningful change,” emphasizing that public resources will shift toward products such as the Gallup World Poll, its Social Series on U.S. attitudes, and subscription-based historical data through Gallup Analytics. thehill +1 Gallup made a similar move in 2015 when it largely exited “horse-race” election polling, citing methodological and strategic concerns. nytimes

Critics See a Political and Historical Loss

The announcement immediately raised concerns among political scientists, historians and journalists who rely on Gallup’s long-running series to compare presidents across eras using a consistent methodology. One former Gallup editor has described the approval question as “the most frequently used public opinion measure in history,” a tool that allowed researchers to track the public response to wars, recessions and scandals on a common scale. theguardian

Some commentators also questioned the timing, noting the decision came after Gallup’s final published reading put Trump’s approval at 36%, near the lowest points of his presidency, and amid heightened attacks on pollsters and the media from the White House. usatoday +1 Gallup has insisted the change is “solely based” on its research goals and priorities, a line repeated across multiple outlets. thehill +1 In practice, news organizations are expected to lean more heavily on other national polls and aggregators like Morning Consult, CNN/SSRS, YouGov/Economist and RealClearPolitics-style averages to fill the gap. axios +1

The Bigger Picture

The end of Gallup’s presidential approval series removes a uniquely long, methodologically consistent yardstick from American politics, even as the broader polling ecosystem grows more crowded and fragmented. While approval numbers will continue to flow from dozens of pollsters, none offer Gallup’s nearly nine-decade timeline, forcing historians and analysts to rely more on stitched-together averages and proprietary archives to understand how the public judged presidents over time. nytimes +1 The shift underscores how even the institutions that helped define modern political measurement are recalibrating in an era of changing survey methods, declining phone response rates and fierce partisan scrutiny of polls themselves.