Trump ends 1st year with lowest average approval rating

WASHINGTON – This is a record not to be coveted: Donald Trump is wrapping up a year in office with the lowest average approval rating of any elected president in his first year.

That’s according to polling by Gallup, which shows that Trump has averaged just a 39 per cent approval rating since his inauguration. The previous low was held by Bill Clinton, whose first-year average stood 10 points higher than Trump’s, at 49 per cent.

Recent surveys show most Americans view Trump as a divisive figure and even question his fitness for office. One relative bright spot for Trump is his handling of the economy, though even there his ratings are not as high as might be expected given a relatively strong economy.

What the polls show about how Americans view their president a year into his term:

UNUSUAL UNPOPULARITY

Trump’s current approval rating in Gallup’s weekly poll is comparable to his average rating, standing at just 38 per cent, with 57 per cent saying they disapprove.

The persistence of Trump’s first-year blues is unprecedented for a president so early in his term. Americans usually give their new presidents the benefit of the doubt, but Trump’s “honeymoon period,” to the extent he had one, saw his approval rating only as high as 45 per cent.

Since then, Trump has spent more time under 40 per cent than any other first-year president.

Presidents have recovered from periods of low popularity before. For example, Clinton’s rating fell to just 37 per cent in June 1993 before quickly regaining ground, and he went on to win re-election. Harry S. Truman held the approval of less than 40 per cent of Americans for significant chunks of his first term and was also re-elected. He went on to set Gallup’s lowest-ever approval mark, at just 22 per cent in 1952.

Trump’s lowest point in Gallup’s weekly polling — 35 per cent — remains higher than those of several earlier presidents. Truman, Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter all had their ratings dip under 30 per cent.

STRONG SUITS

There aren’t many bright spots for Trump, but there are some. For one, most Republicans continue to approve of him — 83 per cent of registered voters who identify as Republicans, according to a recent Quinnipiac poll.

The same poll found that most voters overall find Trump to be intelligent and a strong person.

And positive ratings for Trump’s handling of the economy have tended to run higher than his overall job ratings.

In a December poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, Trump’s rating on handling the economy was 8 percentage points higher than his overall approval, though even that stood at just 40 per cent in the survey, which was a particularly negative one for Trump.

In the Quinnipiac poll, voters were more likely to say Trump is helping the economy than hurting it, 37 per cent to 29 per cent. On the other hand, more said President Barack Obama deserves the credit than Trump does, 49 per cent to 40 per cent.

ON THE ISSUES

Aside from the economy, surveys have suggested few policy bright spots for Trump.

Health care has been a consistent low point. Seven in 10 Americans in the December AP-NORC poll said they disapproved of Trump’s handling of the issue, even as 85 per cent called the issue very important to them personally.

In another AP-NORC poll conducted late in 2017, just 23 per cent of Americans said he has kept the promises he made while running for president, while 30 per cent said he’s tried and failed and 45 per cent said he has not done so at all. More than half said the country is worse off since Trump became president.

That poll was conducted before the passage of a tax bill that Trump signed into law in late December, but there’s little sign that the law will have an immediate positive impact. A Gallup poll conducted in January found that just 33 per cent of Americans approved of the legislation.

CHARACTER CONCERNS

But it may be character more than policy that’s driving negative opinions of Trump. In the January poll by Quinnipiac University, most voters said Trump is not level-headed, honest or even fit to serve as president.

And the AP-NORC poll conducted in December found that two-thirds of Americans thought the country has become even more divided as a result of Trump’s presidency.

In a July Gallup poll that asked those who disapproved of Trump for their reasons why, most cited his personality or character over issues, policies or overall job performance. That stood in stark contrast to Gallup’s polling on Obama in 2009 and George W. Bush in 2001, when far fewer cited such concerns about personality or character as reasons for their negative opinions.

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