America First / MAGA Exit Drives Decline in Republican Identification to Lowest Level Since January 2022
Roughly one month into an unpopular war and President Donald Trump’s approval rating settled into decisively negative territory in March. The survey was conducted by BIG DATA POLL as part of the Public Polling Project for March 2026.
In March, President Trump’s job approval came at 42.3% and 55.7% said they disapproved, marking the highest level of disapproval measured during his second term. The -13.4% spread also marks the widest negative spread of this tenure.
Though it improved slightly from February, the Intensity Index—the difference between the percentage of those who strongly approve and strongly disapprove of the job the president is doing in office—remains fairly negative (-20.0) and is the second widest gap measured behind last month (-22.3).
Where Have All the MAGA Gone?
The percentage of voters who identified as Republican fell in March to 33.4%, the lowest level since January 2022 (32.4%) and far off from the 39.7% measured on November 3, 2024. That coincided with an increase in the percentage of voters who identified as independent. It represents a roughly 10% decline in Republican identification since the start of January, and even greater decline since the president won his second term.
In March, 15.7% of independents told us they previously identified as Republicans, and more specifically, America First or MAGA. This group still hold a significantly positive view of the president and majority approval (52.1%). However, they vehemently opposes the war (57.9%) and believes Israel has too much control over U.S. foreign policy (56.2%).
White House Focus Tracker
Last year, motivated by repeated concerns raised by voters during interviews, BIG DATA POLL created the White House Policy Focus Tracker. It directly gauges voters’ views towards the administration’s, and indirectly measures the where voters prefer the administration to focus their efforts.
In March, the percentage of voters who say the administration is too focused on foreign policy hit a new high at 62.0%, easily eclipsing the prior high of 56.3% measured in January. Only 12.9% say they are too focused on domestic issues, and just 25.1% say the focus has been balanced. This should be particularly concerning for the administration and Republicans given the top five most important voting issues in our 2026 Rank Distribution for Most Important Issues are all domestic issues.
Direction of Country: Right Track OR Wrong Track?
The Direction of Country Index started the year with 36.3% saying the country is headed in the right direction, essentially unchanged from the year-end reading at 36.1%. That percentage is now down to just 33.4%, the lowest since former President Joe Biden left office in January 2025. Further, the percentage of registered voters who say it’s off on the wrong track hit 58.3%, the highest since December 2024 and up from last month’s reading at 57.0%. That also marks the widest negative spread since January 2025 at -23.4 versus -14.1 in the middle of the month.
Iran War Unpopular, Voters Have No Appetite for War
Roughly 4 in 10 support the U.S. military strikes against the regime in Iran and roughly 1 in 2 oppose it. The military action is unpopular with just about every demographic group except for older Republicans. While the president’s partisan base is willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, even they do not find the war important or necessary and would rather the president focus on domestic issues.
About 8 in 10 voters (77.8%) voters say “it is important for the U.S. to stay out of foreign wars and military conflicts”, up from 70.9% last month and including 42.2% who now say it’s “very important”. Last July, BIG DATA POLL found only 24.6% of voters supported such a move in the Middle East, with roughly as many 25.6% saying they believe the U.S. should play no role in the region. The largest percentage and plurality (37.7%) preferred only diplomatic action.
Nearly 6 in 10 (59.5%) say the president has not “clearly explained the reasons and goals for the U.S. taking military action against Iran”, while only 39.5% say that he has.
Which party voters trust to avoid war—or, as stated “to keep the U.S. out of foreign wars and military conflicts”—has long foreshadowed popular vote winners both statewide and nationally in surveys conducted by BIG DATA POLL. It was the first sign of trouble for then-incumbent President Trump in 2020 in the Big Six Rust Belt Poll. In 2024, the results forecasted the winner nationally and all battleground states to include nearly identical findings in Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Now, 42.0% trust the Democratic Party more to keep the U.S. out of foreign wars and military conflicts, while just 28.1% chose the Republican Party and nearly as many (22.7%) chose “neither”. In February, Democrats held a much smaller 8-point advantage, 38.8% to 31.4%.
Methodology
The Public Polling Project conducted by BIG DATA POLL interviewed 3,003 registered voters nationwide from March 22 to March 24, 2026. Interviews conducted online are sourced through Lucid (CINT) and live-agent phone interviews including P2P SMS and text-to-online are sourced from either the L2 National Voter File Database. Participants who opted for text-to-online were given 24 hours to complete the interview. Interview details plotted on maps can be reviewed by hovering and clicking on the locator pins. Results were weighted for sex, age, race and ethnicity, education, and geography. The overall sampling error is ±1.9% at a 95% confidence level. It is important to note that sampling errors for subgroups are higher. All BIG DATA POLL publicly conducted surveys are crowdfunded via the Public Polling Project, supplemented if necessary by BIG DATA POLL and are NOT funded by or affiliated with any candidate, campaign, committee, or political entity. Full and interactive crosstabs can be viewed on MarketSight.
