Us President Is Being Forced To Deal With Some Of The Same Dynamics As His Predecessor
Former US president Donald Trump has overtaken his successor Joe Biden in favourability ratings among American voters in what has been described as a remarkable turnaround.
The Times reported that, just eight months after the transfer of power, Trump has a positive rating of 48% compared with Bidens 46% in a Harvard-Harris poll. Back in February, Biden had a 56% positive rating compared with Trumps 43%.
The team that surrounded Trump during his reign also fared better than Bidens circle. Some 55% of respondents said that Mike Pence was a better vice president than his successor, Kamala Harris, and 63% believed that Mike Pompeo was a better secretary of state than Antony Blinken.
A number of other surveys have discovered the same trend, with a poll in the bellwether state of Iowa putting Bidens approval rating at just 31%, down from 43% in June.
Meanwhile, after Biden dropped to a new low of 43% approval in the monthly Gallup survey, down six points from August and 14 since his inauguration in January, the pollster pointed out that among elected presidents since World War Two, only Trump has had a lower job approval rating than Biden does at a similar point in their presidencies.
The Daily Mail agreed that voters regret voting for Biden after his disastrous exit from Kabul, as well as revelations that the US mistakenly killed 10 people, including one aid worker and seven children, after a botched drone strike meant to kill an ISIS-K terrorist.
United States Presidential Approval Rating
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In the United States, presidential job approval ratings were first conducted by George Gallup to gauge public support for the president of the United States during their term. An approval rating is a percentage determined by polling which indicates the percentage of respondents to an opinion poll who approve of a particular person or program. Typically, an approval rating is given to a politician based on responses to a poll in which a sample of people are asked whether they approve or disapprove of that particular political figure. A question might ask: “Do you approve or disapprove of the way that the current president is handling their job as president?”
Like most surveys that measure opinions, individual poll results may be inaccurate. Many unscientific approval rating systems exist that show inaccurate statistics. Examples that self select, such as online questions are of this type however, the aggregate approval rating is generally accepted by statisticians, as a statistically valid indicator of the comparative changes in the popular United States mood regarding a president.
Approval Ratings By State
Approval ratings vary greatly by state and can indicate how a state will vote in the upcoming 2020 Presidential Election. Since his inauguration in January 2017, President Trumps net approval has decreased in every state. President Trumps approval rating is decreasing in important states that he won in his 2016 election, including swing states and states that are consistently Republican in every election. The three key states Trump had in his 2016 election are Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, all of which currently have approval ratings under 50%.
Below are each states approval ratings for President Trump as of February 2020. Data is from a poll by the Morning Consult.
- Net approval since Trump took office has decreased by 18 points
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Polling Average Put Biden’s Approval Rating Higher Than 39%
Experts say approval ratings should be calculated by looking at an average between polls not a single poll. On the day the claim was made, the polling average for Biden’s approval rating was 45.2%.
“The best practice to look at multiple polls and not to fixate on an individual poll, which can be cherry-picked to make inaccurate arguments,” Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center and professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in an email.
The website FiveThirtyEight rates how different polls vary in terms of accuracy and statistical bias. It calculates approval ratings for presidents based on a weighted average that takes into account poll quality and uncertainty.
According to that polling average, Biden’s approval rate was 45.2% on the day the claim was posted.
The Facebook post appeared to refer to an Economist/YouGov poll conducted Sept. 4-7. It reported 39% of American adults approved of Biden. YouGov noted this was the first time the majority of Americans disapproved of Biden during his presidency.
However, Burden told USA TODAY this poll was “unusually low.”
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“In the last month YouGov has also reported approval ratings of 44% and 50%,” he said. “Taken as a group it is more accurate to say that Biden’s rating is hovering in the mid-40s.”
Absence Makes The Heart Grow Fonder
Americans tend to view presidents more favorably in retrospect than they do while in office, Gallup polling has shown.
In addition to leaving office, another factor has kept Trump from a continuous spotlight: Social media giants Twitter, Facebook and YouTube have all banned the former president from posting on their platforms, a decision they enacted shortly after his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in January. The companies have argued the move is necessary to prevent the spread of dangerous misinformation, though its raised questions about free speech and censorship on social media.
Trump has remained an active guest on conservative platforms, and he briefly posted thoughts to a personal blog. But stripped of his Twitter account and the White House megaphone, hes largely receded from mainstream attention.
Selzer said none of that appears to be hurting Trumps favorability numbers in Iowa.
It doesnt seem to be a case of out of sight out of mind, she said. Maybe its a little bit more of absence makes the heart grow fonder.
In a December 2018 Iowa Poll of registered Republicans, only 19% of respondents said they thought posting potentially inflammatory messages on Twitter on a regular basis was a good move for Trump. Far more 72% said doing so was a mistake.
Karen Moon, a 32-year-old Indianola resident and poll respondent, said she was never a fan of Trumps public persona.
She would definitely vote for him if he ran again for president, Moon said.
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As His Agenda Stalls In Congress The President Receives Poor Marks On Health Care And The Economy
Joe Biden won the White House last year with 52.3% of the two-party popular vote, a higher share than either Barack Obama managed in 2012 or Donald Trump in 2016 . He was even more popular during his first few weeks in office: his net approval ratingthe difference between the share of voters who support and oppose himwas plus 14 percentage points, according to The Economists weekly poll with YouGov. But after just seven months in office, his approval ratings slipped below 50%. Since then, things have only got worse.
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Overall, Mr. Bidens approval rating has fallen to around 50 percent among Latino voters in national surveys conducted since the fall of Kabul.
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According to this weeks poll, Mr Bidens net approval rating is a dismal minus nine points. Although this is better than Mr Trumps score of -15 at this point in his presidency, it is far below Mr Obamas plus six. And support for Mr Biden is deteriorating rapidly. His net approval rating has fallen by more than ten points since his 200th day in office, just over two months ago. Mr Obamas fell by only four, and Mr Trumps by just one, over the corresponding period .
It is hard to know exactly what accounts for the slump. Some pin the blame on the surge in covid-19 cases and deaths over the summer, fuelled by the highly contagious Delta variant. After all, voters elected Mr Biden in large part because he was seen as better equipped than Mr Trump to tackle the pandemic. Others think Democrats have become disaffected with the president because he has failed to pass key parts of his agenda, including a bipartisan infrastructure bill and a multi-trillion-dollar social-spending package, which would fund health care, education, climate change and other progressive priorities.
Polls Put Trumps Approval Rating Lower
Despite the recent decline in Biden’s approval, Trump’s ratings were lower during his time in office.
“Biden’s approval rating has clearly taken a turn for the worse in the past several weeks, but he is still faring better than Trump at this point in their presidencies,” Burden said. “Trump had one of the lowest and steadiest approval ratings of any modern president.”
FiveThirtyEight put the polling average for Trump’s approval rating at 38.8% on Sept. 9, 2017, his first year in office. The lowest point of his term came on Dec. 16, 2017, with an average approval rate of 36.4%.
This claim is also wrong looking only at the YouGov poll.
YouGov reported Trumps approval rating never increased far above 40% and reached a term low of 34% in a poll conducted Nov. 10-14, 2017.
In other words, Trump’s low is well below Biden’s current level in YouGov polling.
According to Gallup, Trumps approval rating ranged between 34% and 49% over the course of his presidency. Trump hit the lower end of that range in January, following the insurrection at the Capitol.
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Trump Viewed Favorably By More In Iowa Gop Than Chuck Grassley
Trump has always been a polarizing figure in the state the percentage of all Iowans who viewed him favorably topped 50% only once before in polls dating to January 2018. That was in March 2020, just as the coronavirus pandemic began to surge in the U.S.
But he has maintained popularity among Iowa Republicans throughout his time in office, and the vast majority continue to view him favorably.
According to the Registers Iowa Poll, 91% of Iowa Republicans have a favorable view of him and just 7% view him unfavorably. Another 2% are not sure.
Those marks put Trump in league with Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds, who is viewed favorably by 90% of Iowa Republicans. And it surpasses Republican U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, who is viewed favorably by 81% of Iowans.
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I did not foresee the day when Donald Trump would be 10 points more popular with Iowa Republicans than the venerable Chuck Grassley, said pollster J. Ann Selzer, president of Selzer & Co.
That Republican goodwill contrasts with Democrats feelings for Trump, 99% of whom view him unfavorably. Just 1% view him favorably.
Independent Iowans are nearly evenly split, with 48% viewing him favorably and 49% viewing him unfavorably. Another 3% are unsure.
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Poll of the week: A new Quinnipiac University poll finds that President Donald Trump’s approval rating stands at 34%, while his disapproval is at 61%. The same pollster put Trump at a 33% approve to 60% disapprove split last week.
What’s the point: Before we bid adieu: This story has been updated with more poll numbers released in Trump’s final days as president.
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Will Trump Be A Factor Or Not
Finally, the poll finds 20 percent of registered voters saying their vote in 2022 will be a signal of opposition against Trump and 21 percent saying it will be a signal of opposition against Biden.
A majority of voters 52 percent say their vote wont be a signal about either Trump or Biden.
Little to me indicates that Trump, a year after the election, is uniquely a figure thats driving the vote, McInturff said.
The NBC News poll was conducted Oct. 23-26 of 1,000 adults 650 of whom were reached only by cellphone and it has an overall margin of error of plus-minus 3.1 percentage points.
The margin of error for the polls 820 registered voters is plus-minus 3.4 percentage points.
Looking Ahead To 2022
Looking ahead to 2022 midterm elections, which will take place a year from now, 47 percent of registered voters say they prefer a Democratic-controlled Congress, while 45 percent say they want Republicans in charge essentially unchanged from August.
But the GOP enjoys a significant enthusiasm advantage at this point in the election cycle, with 69 percent of Republicans expressing a high level of interest about the midterms , versus 58 percent of Democrats who hold the same level of interest.
When asked which party better handles particular issues, Republicans hold double-digit advantages on border security , inflation , crime , national security , the economy and being effective and getting things done .
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