2025 Year in Review: How the Left Reached a Record Low 18% Approval Rating

By late 2025 congressional Democrats registered a record low 18 percent approval rating, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll, with 73 percent disapproving. Even among Democrats only 42 percent approved of their party’s performance, while approval among independents fell into the low teens. Economic memory played a central role. Inflation peaked at approximately 9 percent in June 2022, the highest level in more than forty years, before easing to roughly 3 percent in 2025 based on Consumer Price Index data. While the rate declined, cumulative prices remained elevated. Mortgage rates near 7 percent, rent increases exceeding 20 percent since 2020, and food prices up roughly 25 percent over four years left many voters feeling economically worse off despite improving headline numbers.

Foreign policy divisions further weakened confidence. Polling from Gallup and Pew Research showed Democratic approval of Israel’s military actions falling below 20 percent, while a majority of Democrats and independents opposed additional US military aid. Campus protests and national demonstrations reinforced perceptions that Democratic leaders were responding to activist pressure rather than maintaining a clear foreign policy consensus. Among independents, Pew surveys showed trust in Democratic handling of foreign affairs dropping below 35 percent, contributing to the broader collapse in approval.

Domestic protest politics compounded these doubts. The No Kings protests, held in June and October, drew large crowds nationwide but also significant backlash. Surveys conducted by Quinnipiac during this period found that nearly 70 percent of voters believed the country was in a political crisis and over 65 percent said protests were increasing division rather than improving governance. Critics emphasized the contradiction of protesting monarchy in a nation deliberately designed by its founders as a three equal branch constitutional system created to prevent monarchies altogether. For many voters this symbolized political theater rather than civic clarity.

Generational polling also alarmed older and moderate voters. The Harvard Kennedy School Youth Poll found that 38 percent of Americans ages 18 to 29 said political violence could be justified in certain circumstances, while only 19 percent identified positively with capitalism, down from 29 percent in 2020. Critics argued that Democratic leaders were reluctant to clearly repudiate these views or reassert constitutional norms and civic restraint. Taken together, these specific events, foreign policy division, protest, hypocrisy, economic anxiety, and leadership paralysis converged to drive the left’s approval rating to a historic low and set the stage for an unsettled political landscape heading into 2026.

By 1776 Patriot