Analyzing poll claiming to show Trump's approval rating rose to 54% after Putin summit

Taija Perry Cook
Sat, August 23, 2025


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Following a historic meeting in Alaska between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Aug. 15, 2025, a claim spread online that a poll found Trump's approval rating had increased to 54%.

The claim made its way across multiple platforms, including the official White House X account (archived), where it received more than 371,600 views, as of this writing. "Majority of Americans APPROVE of the PRESIDENT OF PEACE!" The post read.



The White House post did not include a source for the claim, but other posts and articles (archived) pointed to the website InsiderAdvantage, which published a poll on Aug. 18 that it said was conducted between Aug. 15-17 and measured participants' opinion of Trump.

It claimed that out of 1,000 participants, 54% approved, 43.6% disapproved and 2.4% had no opinion or were undecided following Trump's summit with Putin. The poll cited a 3.09% Margin of Error (MOE) — which represents the potential for statistical error in the survey.


(insideradvantage.com)

The site also published an analysis of the poll results by InsiderAdvantage Pollster Matt Towery, who stated:

Donald Trump now has an advantage among every age group other than the most senior of voters. He has improved his numbers among African-Americans and Hispanic-Latinos. White voters are at a near record 64%. Voters under 65 years of age now approve of his job performance by wide margins. Only the nation's oldest voters disapprove of his job performance, which is consistent with our prior surveys. Overall, his approval numbers are surging upwards post-summit.

We reached out to InsiderAdvantage seeking further information on the pool of participants and any context supporting the results' credibility, but we have not, as of this writing, received an answer. We will update this story if we do.

The website doesn't include an About page or any information regarding any funding, origins or capacity of the organization. The site lists a physical and a mailing address in Georgia but it's unclear what exists at the address listed.

Typically, credible poll sites provide information on their polling methodology and generally offer readers transparency regarding their approach. InsiderAdvantage did not publish any information about the poll's methodology, the credentials of the pollster(s) or how they reached participants, etc.

Better-known pollsters such as Gallup and YouGov estimated Trump's approval rating, as of this writing, to be around 40%. The most recent Gallup poll was taken between July 7-21, 2025, and it estimated his approval rating at that time to be 37%.

More recently, a poll by YouGov — cited by The Economist and others in their live tracker of Trump's rating — estimated his rating at 40% approval, 55% disapproval, and 4% unsure, as of Aug. 21, close to the time range of the InsiderAdvantage poll. According to YouGov's data, instead of increasing following Trump's meeting with Putin, his approval rating went down 1.0 point in the time since the previous week.

(The Economist)

InsiderAdvantage did not provide the necessary context or information on methodology to verify the accuracy of its poll. Other, more transparent surveys' results differed from InsiderAdvantage's, indicating Trump's approval rating around a similar time frame was approximately 40%, not 54%. In fact, YouGov's data from Aug. 17 indicated his disapproval rating was at 54%.

(today.yougov.com)

Sources:

'Donald Trump's Approval Rating'. The Economist, https://www.economist.com/interactive/trump-approval-tracker. Accessed 21 Aug. 2025.

Home of the Marist Poll | Polls, Analysis, Learning, and More. https://maristpoll.marist.edu/. Accessed 21 Aug. 2025.

Inc, Gallup. 'Methodology Center'. Gallup.Com, 17 Oct. 2014, https://www.gallup.com/178685/methodology-center.aspx.

Inc, Gallup. 'Presidential Approval Ratings -- Donald Trump'. Gallup.Com, 16 Nov. 2016, https://news.gallup.com/poll/203198/presidential-approval-ratings-donald-trump.aspx.

'InsiderAdvantage - Bias and Credibility'. Media Bias/Fact Check, 21 Aug. 2025, https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/insideradvantage-bias-and-credibility/.

InsiderAdvantage. https://insideradvantage.com/. Accessed 21 Aug. 2025.

Methodology | YouGov. https://today.yougov.com/about/panel-methodology. Accessed 21 Aug. 2025.

President Trump's Second-Term Job Approval Rating. https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/trackers/donald-trump-approval. Accessed 21 Aug. 2025.

Top Line Tabs Trump Approval – InsiderAdvantage. https://insideradvantage.com/top-line-tabs-trump-approval/. Accessed 21 Aug. 2025.

Trump Approval Surges Post Summit: 54%-44%; All Voters Under 65 Years of Age Approve…Older Voters Not So Much – InsiderAdvantage. https://insideradvantage.com/trump-approval-surges-post-summit-54-44-all-voters-under-65-years-of-age-approve-older-voters-not-so-much/. Accessed 21 Aug. 2025.

'400 Galleria Pkwy Suite 1500 · 400 Galleria Pkwy, Atlanta, GA 30339'. 400 Galleria Pkwy Suite 1500 · 400 Galleria Pkwy, Atlanta, GA 30339, https://www.google.com/maps/place/400+Galleria+Pkwy+Suite+1500,+Atlanta,+GA+30339/@33.8852679,-84.4615083,21z/data=!4m7!3m6!1s0x88f51048660aa79b:0x18bf86b16b686e98!8m2!3d33.8852763!4d-84.4613172!10e3!16s%2Fg%2F11nssm8zw7?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDgxOS4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D. Accessed 21 Aug. 2025.