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Presidential Approval Rating Odds

A presidential approval rating is the share of the public that says it approves of how the president is handling the job, measured by pollsters and combined into an average by aggregators. Because that number is published on a regular cadence and tied to a named source, it is something prediction markets can price: traders buy and sell contracts on where the approval figure will sit on a given date, or whether it will move above or below a threshold. This page explains what the approval rating is, how markets on Polymarket and Kalshi frame it, the specific aggregator and rule each market resolves on, and the news and economic data that tend to move the number. It treats approval as a recurring, time-bound metric rather than a single result. Prices here are crowd-implied probabilities that can be wrong, and nothing on this page is financial advice.

No live markets on this are trading right now — browse the live feed for what the crowd is pricing today.

What a presidential approval rating actually measures

Approval rating is a single, well-defined survey statistic: the percentage of respondents who say they approve of the way the president is handling the job. The standard question, used in roughly its current form since the Truman era, is some version of "Do you approve or disapprove of the way [the president] is handling his job as president?" Pollsters put that question to a sample of adults, then report the approve and disapprove shares. The two figures usually do not sum to 100 percent because some respondents are unsure.

George Gallup began tracking presidential approval around 1937, and for decades Gallup's number was the reference point. That role has shifted: on February 11, 2026, Gallup announced it would stop polling presidential approval after about 88 years. Today the headline "approval rating" most people cite is not a single poll but an average of many polls, which smooths out the noise of any one survey. Statisticians generally treat a well-built aggregate as a valid indicator of how the national mood is changing over time, even though any individual poll can miss.

Approval is inherently time-bound. It is a snapshot of sentiment at a moment, and it moves continuously as new polls come in. That is exactly what makes it tradable: there is a fresh, public number on a regular cadence, attached to an identifiable source.

How prediction markets frame approval markets

Because approval is a published number rather than a yes/no event, markets have to pin down which number and which moment. They do this in a few recurring formats. The most common is a point-in-time market: "What will the president's approval rating be on [date]?" with the outcomes split into narrow brackets, for example sub-43.5%, 43.5 to 43.9%, 44.0 to 44.4%, and so on up to a top bracket. Each bracket is a separate contract, and the price of each is the market's implied probability that the aggregate lands in that range on the resolution date.

A second format is the threshold or season-long market: "How low (or how high) will approval go this year?" These resolve Yes for a given level — say 40% or below, 35% or below, 30% or below — if the aggregate ever touches that level at any point in the window. A third, shorter-horizon format asks whether approval will be up or down versus the prior reading over a fixed period, often a single week.

Across all of these, the contract is not a wager on a person so much as a money-weighted estimate of a future statistic. The bracket prices, read together, form an implied probability distribution over where the number will be. As of writing, the most active approval markets track the sitting U.S. president, but the same mechanics apply to any leader whose approval an aggregator publishes.

How approval markets resolve: the named source and rule

The single most important detail in any approval market is the resolution source, because "the approval rating" only has one value once you name the aggregator. On Polymarket, recent presidential approval markets resolve to Silver Bulletin's approval-rating aggregator — specifically the value shown by the green trend line for the resolution date — with RealClearPolitics named as the fallback if Silver Bulletin's number becomes permanently unavailable. The aggregate is read to one decimal place (for example 43.8%), and the brackets are written to match that precision.

Resolution also depends on when a number is considered final. Aggregators update continuously, so markets typically treat a given day's figure as finalized once the next data point is published. Markets also include a deadline rule: if the figure for the resolution date is not posted by a stated cutoff, resolution falls back to the most recent available data points. Always read a specific market's rules, since the named source, the exact line on the chart, the rounding, and the cutoff time are what determine the outcome — not a number you might see quoted elsewhere.

This is why two markets that look identical can settle differently: one might key off Silver Bulletin's aggregate and another off RealClearPolitics, and those two averages can differ by a point or more at the same moment because they include different polls and weight them differently.

What moves the odds

Approval markets reprice as the underlying average moves, and the average moves with the news. The most durable, slow-moving driver is the economy. Over long horizons, conditions like unemployment and inflation tend to track with approval, though the short-term link is noisier than people assume and not every study finds a strong effect. Sharp prints in inflation, jobs, or growth, and the cost-of-living mood they create, can pull the average over weeks.

Discrete events move it faster. New presidents usually start with an elevated "honeymoon" number that drifts down over their first months, so early-term markets often price a gradual decline. International crises can produce a rally-round-the-flag jump, where approval rises sharply during a national-security event — the clearest example being George W. Bush, whose approval spiked to roughly 90% after the September 11, 2001 attacks, the highest ever recorded. Such rallies are usually temporary and fade. In the other direction, scandals, legislative fights, and unpopular policy decisions can erode the number.

For traders, the calendar matters: aggregates update on a regular cadence, and each new batch of polls can shift a tight bracket. Because the markets resolve on a specific reading on a specific date, short-term volatility in the average — not just the long-run trend — drives how the brackets are priced. Treat any single live price as a probability, not a forecast of certainty; crowds can be confidently wrong, especially around one-off events that polls have not yet captured.

Reading approval odds as news, not as a tip

The value of an approval market, from a news standpoint, is the implied probability it puts on a level being reached — for instance, the market's odds that the aggregate falls below 40% this year, or that it sits in a given band on a fixed date. That figure is a fast, money-weighted read on where informed traders think sentiment is heading, and it often moves before the next batch of polls is public.

It is still an estimate. The market can only be as good as the polls feeding the aggregator, and aggregates carry their own house effects and lag. A bracket priced at 70% is not a promise; it means the crowd, after weighing the available evidence, assigns roughly a 70% chance. Surprises — a sudden crisis, an economic shock, a scandal — can move both the underlying number and the odds quickly.

Crowdtells reads these markets as a signal of what to report on, then briefs the actual news behind the move with real sourcing. Use the odds to gauge how the public mood is trending and which way risk is leaning; for the precise current number, check a live market and the named aggregator directly. None of this is financial advice.