Supreme Court approval hits record low as Republicans’ support declines

The Supreme Court‘s job approval rating among all Americans has hit a record low, as support for the high court by Republicans sharply dropped in 2026, a new Gallup poll has found.

Just 33% of Americans approve of the job the Supreme Court is doing, Gallup found. That is a 6-percentage-point drop from the 39% who approved of its work in July 2025, which was the prior low-water mark for approval of the court.

A record high of 61% of Americans disapprove of the court, according to Gallup, which has been polling the public’s approval of the Supreme Court for 26 years. That is up from a disapproval rate of 52% last September.

“Republicans’ approval rating of the Supreme Court has dropped to 58% from a near-record high 79% in the last measurement in September,” Gallup noted in a write-up about the poll. That is the lowest approval rating among Republicans in nearly three years.

“This decline may indicate that rulings unfavorable to the Trump administration this term, such as those on tariffs and birthright citizenship, weigh more heavily in Republicans’ evaluations of the court than the rulings that favored [President Donald] Trump and the GOP,” Gallup said.

The Supreme Court in its recently concluded term said Trump did not have the right to impose wide-ranging tariffs on imports from most of the world’s countries under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The court also voided a Trump executive order that would have sharply restricted the constitutional right to being a U.S. citizen by birth.

And the court rejected Trump’s bid to summarily fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook as a lawsuit challenging her termination plays out.

However, Trump and his administration did notch some major wins, including allowing a president to fire members of purportedly independent government agencies.

Gallup’s poll questioned 1,200 adults in telephone interviews from July 1 through 19. The poll’s margin of sampling error was 4 percentage points.

Gallup each year polls Americans about their views on the Supreme Court in July, after the end of the court’s term, and in September, weeks before the court resumes hearing cases in October.

The new poll found that approval ratings for the Supreme Court among Democrats and independents were basically unchanged from September 2025. Just 12% of Democrats approve of the job the court is doing, while only 35% of independents approve.

“Democrats’ ratings for the past five years, all coming since the court has held a 6-3 conservative majority, rank among the lowest for any party group in Gallup’s trend,” Gallup noted.