How Americans feel about Trump right now

President Donald Trump’s approval ratings are among the lowest they’ve been since he returned to the White House, as polls suggest voters’ concerns about the economy are colliding with disapproval of the war in Iran.

New polls show this could be especially true for young voters, who helped give Trump a second term.

“I think Trump is looking for an offramp from this conflict,” said Rosa Brooks, a national security expert at Georgetown University Law Center. “His hard-core base may believe his claims of victory, regardless of the military and geopolitical realities, but independence and Democrats are unlikely to be persuaded. This will further damage Republican prospects in the midterm elections.”

Here’s what’s going on.

An average of 38% of Americans approve of the job Trump is doing right now, according to a new Washington Post average of polls in the second half of March while 59% disapprove.

He took office more than a year ago with a divided public, an average 47% of Americans approving of him, and it’s been steadily declining ever since. The war in Iran hasn’t produced any huge changes (in February an average of 38% approved of the job he was doing), but it’s notable that his approval ratings haven’t rebounded much from low-points.

“His support has been low by historical standards,” said Lou Jacobson chief author of the Almanac of American Politics, “and it hasn’t really gotten any better.”

Trump asserts that much of what he’s doing will become popular when voters see the end game. “A lot of times, you can’t convince a voter,” he told Reuters in January. “You have to just do what’s right. And then a lot of the things I did were not really politically popular. They turned out to be when it worked out so well.”

Trump promised a quick end to the war, but in its fourth week, it’s not clear if the war is ending or ramping up. Trump is moving 2,000 troops to the region at the same time the U.S. says it has a plan to end the war. But gas prices continue to rise because of the conflict and Trump has struggled to find ways to re-open the Strait of Hormuz to ease the bottlenecked flow of oil from the region.

War with Iran was not on most Americans’ radar, but now that its started most Americans agree with some of Trump’s stated goals for the war — to end its nuclear program and stop it from threatening other countries, a CBS News poll this last week found. But 58% expect gas prices to rise in the long term, well beyond the short-term pain Trump has asked Americans to endure. The same poll found 60% oppose taking military action against Iran overall and 92% want to end the conflict as quickly as possible.

Also, 44% think the war will make the U.S. economy weaker in the long term. That could signal that as November’s midterm elections near, Americans will connect higher prices directly with Trump’s actions in Iran just as they have with tariffs.

Democrats certainly plan to.

“It’s the latest receipt — literally — for what Trump has done to people,” said Democratic strategist Jesse Ferguson. “The check out line, the kitchen table or the gas pump, he’s made everything harder and more expensive.”

One emerging data point is that workers aren’t feeling great about their earnings and abilities to get a new job. Just 23% of Americans rate the job market as good, a recent economic tracker from SSRS finds, while 47% rate it as bad.

Young workers are particularly desperate. The unemployment rate for college graduates in their 20s is higher than the overall unemployment rate, and more than 40% hold jobs that don’t typically require college degrees, the New York Times reports.

There are a lot of reasons for this, like artificial intelligence cutting down on hiring and even increasing layoffs, as well as uncertainty about Trump’s tariffs and mass deportations, say economists. But the war in Iran certainly isn’t helping boost the economy. The longer the war goes on, the more it increases the risk of rising grocery prices, the costs of other goods and even flights as the price of airline fuel goes up, too.

“It’s extremely hard for those entering the job market,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist with the tax and accounting firm KPMG, in a recent interview. “It's easier to get a job even if you have one, and even that is getting more difficult.”