Four years ago, the sharpest political attacks on presidential fitness came almost exclusively from Republican quarters, directed squarely at Joe Biden. A new poll released this week suggests that dynamic has shifted in ways that neither party’s strategists anticipated.
A Strength in Numbers/Verasight survey conducted July 14-17, 2026, among 1,514 U.S. adults found that 46 percent of Americans rate President Donald Trump’s mental sharpness as “poor.” The margin of error sits at plus or minus 2.6 percentage points, making the result statistically robust. What makes the number striking isn’t the figure itself – it’s how close it lands to the number Americans assigned to his predecessor.
That 46 percent is only four points below the 50 percent who said the same of Biden’s presidency in the same survey. Biden’s cognitive fitness consumed American political conversation for much of 2024, ultimately contributing to his withdrawal from that year’s race. The poll arrives just weeks after Trump turned 80 in June 2026, and the parallel has caught the attention of pollsters, pundits, and voters across the political spectrum.
The comparison flatters Trump in one significant respect: his positive ratings outrun Biden’s by a clear margin. Twenty-one percent rated Trump’s mental sharpness as “excellent” versus just 7 percent for Biden, while 17 percent rated Trump as “good,” matching Biden’s identical figure on that measure. Combined, 38 percent gave Trump an “excellent” or “good” rating, against 24 percent for Biden. The White House has been quick to highlight that gap. Spokesman Davis Ingle told Newsweek that Trump is “the sharpest and most accessible President in American history.”
The Trump Mental Sharpness Poll in Context: A Year of Shifting Numbers
The July 2026 trump mental sharpness poll didn’t emerge from nowhere. Public confidence in Trump’s cognitive fitness has been declining steadily across multiple polling organizations throughout his second term, with every major survey pointing in the same direction.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in February 2026 found that 61 percent of Americans said they would describe Trump as having “become erratic with age.” That included 89 percent of Democrats, 64 percent of independents, and even 30 percent of Republicans. That last figure is notable: one in three members of Trump’s own party agreeing that their president is growing erratic is not a number that appears in typical partisan polling. The Reuters/Ipsos survey covered 4,638 U.S. adults nationwide with a margin of error of two percentage points, giving it significant statistical weight.
Only 45 percent of respondents in that February poll said they would describe Trump as “mentally sharp and able to deal with challenges,” down from 54 percent in a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in September 2023. That nine-point drop over roughly two and a half years tracks with a broader pattern of eroding confidence across independent pollsters.
A CNN survey from the same period showed the percentage of Americans saying Trump has the “stamina and sharpness to serve effectively as president” declining from 53 percent in late 2023 to 46 percent. A Pew Research survey found confidence in Trump’s mental fitness dropped from 39 percent to 32 percent year-over-year.
By spring, the numbers had deteriorated further. A Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos poll found that 59 percent of respondents said Trump does not have the mental sharpness it takes to lead the country. The same poll found 55 percent saying Trump is not in good enough physical health to serve effectively.
For readers tracking how cognitive health intersects with aging, this Hearty Soul investigation examines what clinical experts say about assessing decline from public appearances alone.
What the Official Record Says
Against this backdrop of public skepticism, the White House has consistently pointed to formal medical evaluations. Trump’s current physician Dr. Sean Barbabella administered the Montreal Cognitive Assessment in April 2025, with Trump scoring 30 out of 30.
The Montreal Cognitive Assessment, or MoCA, was developed by Canadian neurologist Dr. Ziad Nasreddine as a screening tool to help detect cognitive impairment. It contains questions designed to assess cognitive function by testing a patient’s language, memory, visuospatial abilities and orientation, among other assessment categories. The standard test itself should take about 10 minutes to complete. A score of 26 or higher out of 30 is considered normal, while scores between 18 and 25 may indicate mild cognitive impairment. A perfect 30 indicates no detectable signs of impairment on those specific tasks.
According to the official White House physician’s memorandum, a comprehensive neurological examination revealed no abnormalities in Trump’s mental status, cranial nerves, motor and sensory function, reflexes, gait, and balance, and cognitive function assessed using the MoCA was normal with a score of 30 out of 30. Medical experts have been careful, however, to define what the MoCA can and cannot tell us. The test aims to detect signs of cognitive impairment, not to measure intelligence. It tests attention, concentration, language, memory, abstract thinking, and calculation skills. A perfect score rules out the conditions the test screens for, but it doesn’t address the full range of cognitive functions relevant to executive leadership.
Trump returned to office in January 2025 at age 78, becoming the oldest president on inauguration day in history. No formal, standardized battery of cognitive assessments is required by law for U.S. presidents, which means the public is largely dependent on whatever the White House chooses to release from voluntary exams conducted at the president’s physician’s discretion.
The Partisan Divide Beneath the Numbers
Republicans continue to view the president as sharp, with 81 percent of them describing Trump as mentally capable in the February Reuters/Ipsos poll, a figure little changed from the 2023 survey. Among Democrats, the share seeing the president able to deal with challenges fell to 19 percent from 29 percent in 2023. Among independents, the figure dropped from 53 percent to 36 percent over the same period.
That collapse among independents carries particular political significance. Independents are the voters who determine competitive elections, and the drop among Republicans – from a baseline that was never particularly high – suggests even some within Trump’s coalition have begun registering doubts. Among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, those who are “very confident” in Trump’s mental fitness has dropped from 75 percent to 66 percent.
The July 2026 Strength in Numbers/Verasight poll adds another data point to a clear directional trend: public confidence in Trump’s mental sharpness is lower now than at any measured point in his second term, and the gap between his ratings and Biden’s has narrowed to single digits on the negative end of the scale.
Why the Biden Comparison Cuts Both Ways
Biden’s age-related difficulties became undeniable in real time, in ways that accumulated across public appearances over months. At the time Biden dropped out of the 2024 race, only around one-quarter of Americans said Biden was mentally sharp and able to deal with challenges. Trump’s numbers, while declining, have not reached that threshold.
Trump’s numbers remain better than Biden’s were at the comparable stage. Biden faced 54 percent doubting his mental sharpness in February 2022, while Trump’s trajectory is moving in the same direction.
For the White House, the comparison is a double-edged argument. Pointing out that Trump outperforms Biden’s ratings implicitly concedes that the question of presidential mental fitness is now legitimately on the table for both parties’ standard-bearers – a position Republican operatives spent much of 2023 and 2024 resisting.
Read More: Trump’s medical assessment and what it missed
What This Means for You
The numbers across these polls tell a consistent story regardless of which organization ran the survey or when: a majority of Americans now question whether Trump has the mental sharpness to serve effectively as president. That hasn’t always been true. The share describing Trump as mentally sharp dropped from 54 percent in September 2023 to 45 percent by February 2026, a slide that predates and may partly explain the more negative results appearing in mid-2026 data.
For voters trying to evaluate this question independently, the relevant clinical context is this: Trump’s physician confirmed an April 2025 MoCA score of 30 out of 30, which represents normal cognitive function on that specific screening tool. That result is real and worth taking seriously. It is also one data point, administered at one point in time, on a test designed to screen for early dementia – not to measure the full breadth of executive cognitive function. The MoCA is a floor, not a ceiling.
The polling data captures something different from what a clinical exam measures – a broad public perception shaped by thousands of observations of a president’s public behavior over an extended period. Both inputs matter, and they are currently pointing in opposite directions. The official health record says one thing. The trend line in public confidence says something else entirely.
Two Things Can Be True at Once
A perfect MoCA score and a 46 percent “poor” public rating are not in conflict. They measure different things. The clinical record establishes that Trump cleared a standard cognitive screen. The polls establish that many Americans – including a growing share of independents and even some Republicans – have formed a different impression based on what they see and hear in public. Neither data point cancels the other out.
What’s changed since 2023 is the direction. Public confidence in Trump’s mental sharpness was majority territory three years ago. By mid-2026, that majority has flipped. Voters watching this debate would do well to weigh the formal medical record alongside the consistent directional movement in public opinion – and to recognize that both are real, even when they point in different directions. Demanding more transparency about presidential health testing isn’t a partisan position. It’s the only way to close the gap between what the clinical record shows and what the public is increasingly convinced it’s seeing.
Disclaimer: The information provided here is for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional psychological, psychiatric, or mental health advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the guidance of a licensed mental health professional, therapist, psychologist, or psychiatrist with any questions or concerns about your emotional well-being or mental health conditions. Never ignore professional advice or delay seeking support because of something you have read here.
AI Disclaimer: This article was created with the assistance of AI tools and reviewed by a human editor.