According to Gallup, President Donald Trump’s weekly approval rating is as low as it has been in nine months.
The new fresh Gallup measure shows Trump at 38 percent approval, 56 percent disapproval. The last time he had a lower approval number, according to Gallup, was the week of Feb. 18, when his approval/disapproval was 37/59. Gallup, which publishes a weekly approval number on Monday, finds that after a five-week rally in late September-early October, the president’s approval number has dropped or stayed flat four weeks in a row.
Here’s the Gallup weekly update.
Don’t make too much of this, for several reasons. First of all, Trump’s approval is not plummeting. The declines have been small and within the margin of error. And secondly, Gallup is a bit of an outlier. The HuffPost average of many polls that try to measure Trump’s ratings does not show any noticeable change in recent weeks and, if anything, shows a slight improvement in Trump’s numbers over the last few weeks. Its current average of many polls has Trump at 51.8 disapproval/43.9 approval.
When I launched the mini-project of watching the ups and downs of Trump’s approval ratings, I’ll confess I expected to see much more movement from month to month, and I expected it to be downward. If there is any merit to my little exercise, it has reinforced that Trump’s admirers are a steadfast lot, consistent with his obnoxious campaign-year boast that his fans are so loyal that he could commit a murder in plain sight and his numbers wouldn’t go down.
Turns out, he was pretty much right, based on the first year and 10 months of his presidency. His approval numbers have stayed within a narrow range.
To be sure, it is not a good range. His approval numbers went “under water” (meaning more disapprovers than approvers) within a week or so of his inauguration, and immediately settled into a narrow range of ups and downs, always under water, but never falling or rising more than a few points. Basically, throughout his presidency, his approval number has fluctuated between 35 and 45 percent and his disapproval number between 50 and 60.
Although it’s been boring, I’ve stuck with my plan to update you every month or so. See you next month.
What are the dates of these polls? I’d like to see how Trump’s behavior this last weekend affects his approval ratings. Of course it depends a lot on the tone of the press coverage, but this isn’t easy to spin.
This just shows yet again that polling is subjective and not really meaningful. All the disapproval of Trump is aimed mainly at his personality. By any economic measures used to rate prior Presidents, Trump has done a pretty good job …about 4% gdp growth, record stock markets, record low unemployment. I don’t get all the hate towards him. If you are honest about it, he’s kept most of Obama’s policies in place on major things (spending , Healthcare, immigration , wars ). But then Obama kept most of Bush’s and Bush kept most of Clinton’s. Major policies and trends rarely ever change. It’s the little things that Presidents differ in. Go look at a graph of federal budgets, debt, M2 money supply, healthcare spending etc. they’ve all maintained a fairly steady (bad) trajectory
“All the disapproval of Trump is aimed mainly at his personality.”
And that personality reveals him to be a person manifestly unfit to be the head of state of a democratic republic.
That is just complete nonsense. Have your forgotten all the Obama gaffes? Like beergate ? Or talk about bringing knives to a gunfight? Or bitter clingers?
Not being politically correct does not make one unfit for office. If we went by your standards, most members of Congress would have to be impeached. Have you forgotten about the secret slush fund to pay off victims of abuse that you can’t know about by members of Congress?
What was beergate? An attempt to bring some calm to a highly publicized dispute with heavy racial overtones? Yeah, if that didn’t merit kicking that boy out of the White House, nothing did.
Seriously–Get over Obama, for crying out loud. he is not President. There is no plausible constitutional scenario under which he will ever become President again. Do you comprehend that? If not, here’s another thought: The reflexive resort to “What about Obama?” from a Trump supporter tells me that they know, on some level, that Trump cannot be defended on his own merits. It couldn’t be any clearer if you came out and said it out loud.
“Not being politically correct does not make one unfit for office.” First, throwing around the term “politically correct” is another cue that you have no defense for his behavior. Second, he is supposed to be representing the United States of America. Do we really want a President who alternates between being a petty thug and a laughingstock?”
“Have you forgotten about the secret slush fund to pay off victims of abuse that you can’t know about by members of Congress?” Which has exactly nothing to do with the fact that the President of the United States behaves like an utter jackass before the eyes of the world.
And there is nothing Don Trump says that is politically incorrect in conservative circles.
Because if you think political correctness only exits on the left, you’re fooling yourself.
A great part of our American way is that the voter gets to vote for whom ever the voter likes. Supporting a politician says as much about their beliefs as it does about the voters beliefs. When the voter supports that politician, it says as much about them as it does about the voter. When the voter finds out the politician struggles with the truth, is misogynistic, bigoted, racist, and xenophobic and the voter continues to support them, that says a whole lot about the voter.
Exactly: a near total and complete inability to deal with others on a factual basis is not just some personality trait. Trump supporters would not allow their kids to lie 70% of the time, if they could only trust 1 in 3 statements from their spouse as being truthful their union would soon end, if their boss consistently fed them false information from a position of authority a reckoning would come sooner rather than later.
But, because Trump gives his supporters goodies they love and drives their political opposites bonkers, these folks have no problem turning their back on the single most foundational, essential personality trait any one can have:
I CAN TRUST YOU
And for the life of me, and because I will give my political opposites the benefit of the doubt on their values, I just can’t understand why they can look the other way on all the lies…
Bob Barnes cannot get away with gross misstatements like this one:
” I don’t get all the hate towards him. If you are honest about it, he’s kept most of Obama’s policies in place on major things (spending , Healthcare, immigration , wars ).”
Those of us who are paying attention to the wild and irresponsible ways that Trump is spending money and removing revenue from what comes in to federal coffers, must protest Barnes’ inaccuracy here. Just one recent example that we should all note well: the beyond-the-budget $200 million for the military troops sitting idly at the southern border awaiting the “invasion” of women and children and other young refugees to get here, some weeks in the future, from Central America. Trump has no thought about how to pay for that, which was a combo of fiscal irresponsibility and human cruelty, not to speak of a contradiction of our laws.
Another: The $14 BILLION he’s taking from worthy programs to subsidy all the American farmers hit badly by Trump’s angry and thoughtless [and un-Republican] tariffs. Think we aren’t noticing these expenses, plus the now $1.7 Billion in annual deficits caused by the “tax reform” Trump touts?
The continued existence of Obamacare is DESPITE Donald Trump, Mr Barnes! He has taken overt and a lot of covert executive actions to undermine and destroy the Affordable Care Act, and people’s ability even to get health insurance. He has wrought havoc on agency regulatory actions to protect our health, our safety, our environment, and the integrity [even the existence!] of federal scientific research.
Trump is not responsible, as President, for any legislation; he doesn’t know how legislative processes work, nor does he care enough even to learn about them. What legislation gets done is done without him, and no one in Washington trusts him.
Trump’s “promises fulfilled” are based on his wild 2015-2016 promises that were based on Trump’s profound ignorance of what he was talking about.
And, in foreign relations, there has not been a worse American president since the 19th century: Trump has been destroying every alliance we had, that we in fact led, and he hasn’t achieved a thing with regard to Iran or North Korea or China or. Russia or . . . .
A total policy disaster, in actions. No way is this a continuation of Obama.