When world leaders visit the Oval Office, Donald Trump is likely to boast about how popular he is and how strong his poll ratings are. Last month he told reporters:
“Let me just tell you that I have today the highest poll numbers I’ve ever had. I have today the highest poll numbers of any Republican president ever.”
And in his speech given the same day at a dinner for Republican governors, he said: “I had an approval rating today of 71 and another one of 69. I have not heard of those numbers before.”
Both of these statements are simply wrong. Gallup has been tracking presidents’ ratings for 80 years. The chart displays its figures for each president, showing their level of popularity one month after they entered the White House.
Far from having the best rating of any president – Republican (red) or Democrat (blue) – Trump has by far the worst. Every other president enjoyed an approval score of at least 50% and a net rating of at least plus 20. Trump fell short eight years ago and he has fallen short again this time.
This table omits the post-inauguration popularity figures for presidents who were starting their second term. In their cases, however, they were simply carrying on in the White House, not returning to it after four years out of power. But, since you ask, even if you include Gallup’s “one-month-in” net scores for presidents who were continuing in office, Trump still comes last.
It is not even true that Trump’s latest figures are “the highest poll numbers I’ve ever had”. Immediately after his first inauguration, Rasmussen gave him a net rating of plus 10. That was out of line with other pollsters; and in any event, even Rasmussen’s figures for Trump’s popularity soon began to decline.
Three years later, Gallup gave him a positive net score four times in the early stages of the Covid pandemic, peaking at plus 4 in March 2020. Otherwise, he spent the whole of his first term in negative territory. The best Trump can legitimately claim is that he is doing slightly less badly today than he was doing one month after his first inauguration. His Gallup rating then was minus 11; this time it is minus 6.
As for his claim that he currently enjoys “an approval rating today of 71 and another one of 69”, I have no idea where these figures come from. At the time of writing, 30 polls have been conducted by 15 different companies since Trump’s inauguration on January 20. Seven out of 11 polls before the end of that month gave him a positive rating in late January. Only four out of 19 have done so in February – and all this before his White House row with Volodymyr Zelensky.
The larger truth is that Trump has polarised American politics to an extraordinary degree. Public goodwill towards new presidents used to cross party boundaries far more than it does nowadays. Before Trump’s first victory, every newly elected president had a net rating one month in of at least plus 30.
Gerald Ford’s lower rating was because he became president after Richard Nixon’s resignation, and then decided to pardon his disgraced predecessor. Likewise, Harry Truman’s and Lyndon B Johnson’s stratospheric ratings should be regarded with caution: they followed the deaths of Franklin D Roosevelt and John F Kennedy.
These generally negative findings about Trump should not surprise us. A number of his latest policies have gone down badly with American voters. Prior to his meltdown with Zelensky, YouGov’s most recent polling found Americans opposing the following measures by margins of 10 points or more:
- Firing hundreds of thousands of US federal workers: support 34%, oppose 51%.
- Imposing a 25% tariff on all steel and aluminium imports to the US: 33-45%.
- Allowing arrests of undocumented immigrants in places of worship: 36-50%.
- Renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America: 30-52%.
- Ending federal funding for schools and universities that require Covid-19 vaccination: 37-48%.
- Dropping federal corruption charges against New York mayor Eric Adams: 18-50%.
- There is also little enthusiasm for the idea of America taking over Canada, Greenland or the Panama Canal.
Nor can Trump claim that his figures are close to, let alone better than, Joe Biden’s. Four years ago, Biden’s rating was plus 20, modest by historical standards but far better than Trump’s either this year or in 2016. Trump should hope that his ratings will improve. For that to happen he needs his policies to work out well. He cannot expect forgiveness if they don’t.
Peter Kellner is a journalist and former president of pollsters YouGov
