American voters name Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth the Trump Cabinet member most likely to leave next, a new survey shows, as war headwinds and Hill pressure grow.
Eleven percent of respondents in a Daily Mail/YouGov survey released this week picked Hegseth as the next senior official headed for the exit. That put him first among named Cabinet figures, ahead of FBI Director Kash Patel at 8 percent, with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. next in the ranking.
A majority still would not lock in a name. Fifty-one percent said they were not sure who would leave next. The result is less a stampede than a snapshot of who sits in the political crosshairs right now.
Hegseth serves as the public face of the War Department and has absorbed the ire that comes with that role. Negative headlines have targeted the Pentagon and U.S. forces during a seven-month-long war in Iran, and that friction is showing up in the numbers.
A September survey from Marquette University Law School found only 25 percent of Americans viewed Hegseth favorably. Nearly half viewed him unfavorably.
A recent Quinnipiac poll was harsher still. Thirty-two percent approved of his performance. Fifty-seven percent disapproved.
War politics sit underneath those figures. A recent Gallup survey found just one in three Americans approved of the president’s handling of the Iran conflict. Hegseth has been the administration’s most visible defender of the effort, and the unpopularity of the fight has landed on him.
Hegseth did not arrive as a caretaker. He pushed stricter fitness and grooming standards, a ban on transgender service members, and cuts among senior billeted ranks, the general and admiral jobs that define the brass.
Critics say he pushed out senior leaders without adequate explanation. Supporters see a long-overdue reset after years of lowered standards and politicized personnel rules. Either way, the culture-war file guarantees permanent opposition from the left and from corners of the permanent bureaucracy.
That same fight over warrior standards has already drawn sharp media fire, including televised attacks on the administration after Hegseth’s public push on military readiness.
Personnel tension inside the building has been real. Ex-Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll resigned from the Pentagon last month after reportedly feuding with Hegseth for months.
Pressure is not limited to Democrats. In September, Republican Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky introduced an impeachment resolution targeting Hegseth, a move that has since fed a wider impeachment fight on the right over the Pentagon chief’s tenure.
Democrats have vowed to probe Hegseth’s contract-awarding process and his involvement in accidentally leaking strike plans to a journalist, the episode labeled “Signalgate.” Those threats are not abstract. They are a roadmap for hearings if the minority retakes power.
Should Democrats win the midterms later this year, Hegseth and his top deputies can expect to be brought before Congress over controversial policies. That midterm risk tracks the same power-shift talk already shaping Democratic impeachment planning for a potential House flip.
Trump has separately signaled how he would handle a hostile Congress, including plans to block Democratic legislation and cut selective deals if Republicans lose their majorities in 2026. Cabinet survival and legislative trench warfare are now the same story.
Hegseth has also moved on election logistics inside the force, including a one-day military stand-down so troops can vote in the midterms, another reminder that the Pentagon calendar and the political calendar are colliding.
The Pentagon was contacted for comment on the survey fallout. No on-the-record reply is detailed in the available reporting.
The Daily Mail/YouGov numbers do not show a public demand that Hegseth resign tomorrow. They show who voters reach for first when asked who might leave next, with most people still unsure.
Patel at 8 percent and Kennedy in third place underline the same point. Name recognition plus controversy equals exit speculation. Hegseth has both, plus a shooting war and a stack of culture fights that the press covers nonstop.
Favorability in the mid-20s and disapproval near 60 percent are real political headwinds. So is a Republican impeachment resolution and a Democratic promise of contract and leak probes after the midterms.
None of that settles whether the fitness rules, the transgender ban, or the senior-rank cuts were sound policy. It does explain why Hegseth tops a list built on expectation, not affection.
Cabinet jobs under fire always look shaky in polls. The ones that matter are the ones that keep restoring standards while the opposition drafts hearing memos.