Ballotpedias Polling Index: Comparison Of Opinion Polling During The Trump And Biden Administrations
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Weeks covered: 36
This page compares overall trends in opinion polling averages during the presidency of Joe Biden to those during the presidency of Donald Trump . Ballotpedias polling indexes are an average of polls that measure public sentiment on presidential job approval, congressional job approval, and satisfaction with the overall direction of the country.
Ballotpedias polling indexes are updated every weekday based on opinion polls released by qualifying sources. The most recent poll released by each qualifying source is included in the overall polling average. Polls are removed from the average when the same source releases a more recent poll or 30 days after the poll was last in the field, whichever occurred first. This page looks at these polling numbers on a week-over-week basis, starting with the first full workweek of the new presidents term. This means that the numbers on this page are all weekly averages of daily average poll results.
To view the current polling index, click here. For a detailed look at opinion polling during the Trump administration, including a full list of qualifying polls taken, click here.
HIGHLIGHTS
Donald Trump’s Approval Rating Plunges To Lowest Point In Over A Year: Poll
Donald Trump’s positive approval rating is at its lowest point in more than a year, whereas President Joe Biden is seeing his highest score in months, according to a poll.
A survey released by NBC News found that Trump currently has a 54 percent negative approval rating, with a 34 percent positive approval.
Trump had the same 54 percent negative approval rating in an August NBC News poll, but with a slightly higher positive approval of 36 percent.
In comparison, Trump also had a 36 percent positive approval rating in May and March 2022, 37 percent in January 2022, and 38 percent in August and October 2021.
The former president’s overall favorability rating of 54 percent positive and 34 percent negative has not been as low since an April 2021 NBC poll, when he recorded 55 percent negative and 32 percent positive numbers.
The poll also found that while Biden’s overall approval rating is still underwater, he is currently seeing the highest positive score in nearly a year.
Biden’s latest NBC favorability rating has him at 45 percent positiveup 3 points from last month and the highest it has been since October 2021and 52 percent negative.
Elsewhere, the poll revealed that voters are currently split when asked who they back in the midterms, with the GOP and Democrat Party at 46 percent when voters asked who they believe should control Congress.
Trump Leaves On A Personal Low Note
The 34% job approval rating for Trump in Gallup’s Jan. 4-15 poll is one point lower than his prior lowest single rating, registered on several occasions in late 2017. The first of these came in August 2017, as Trump was facing intense criticism over his unvarnished threats against North Korean aggression and his response to deadly violence by a white nationalist at a protest in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Between October and December of that year, his approval fell to 35% on three separate occasions as Justice Department officials charged several of Trump’s 2016 campaign figures with crimes in the Russia investigation, including former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to officials in the investigation in December 2017.
His support fell below 40% in two June 2020 polls amid racial justice protests in response to the death of George Floyd at the hands of police and growing displeasure with his handling of the pandemic. By the time of the 2020 election in which he sought a second term, his support had recovered somewhat, and 46% approved of the job Trump was doing.
Trump is the only president not to register a 50% job approval rating at any point in his presidency since Gallup began measuring presidential job approval in 1938. Likewise, he is the only president who did not have a honeymoon period of above-average ratings upon taking office. His initial 45% job approval rating proved to be his high point for his first year as president.
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Critically Trumps Presidency Has Come During A Period Of Historically Extreme Partisan Polarisation The Partisan Approval Gap The Difference Between Democratic And Republican Approval Is Larger For Trump Than For Any Prior President
Do the laws of political gravity simply not apply to this president?
Comparing Trump to George W. Bush, the last Republican president, shows how unusual this situation is. Trumps approval rating for the first half of 2020 is 91% compared with 69% Republican approval for Bush in the first half of 2008.
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Why Has Bidens Approval Rating Gotten So Low So Quickly
![Donald Trump Popularity Higher Than Any President Since WWII Donald Trump Popularity Higher Than Any President Since WWII](https://www.patriotsnet.com/wp-content/uploads/donald-trump-popularity-higher-than-any-president-since-wwii.jpeg)
A FiveThirtyEight Chat
Welcome to FiveThirtyEights politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.
sarah : President Bidens approval ratings are underwater 49.2 percent disapprove of the job he is doing as president while 44.6 percent approve, according to FiveThirtyEights presidential approval tracker.1
This has been true for a while now, too. Since Aug. 30, more Americans have disapproved of Biden than have approved of him.
So, lets tackle Bidens declining approval rating in three parts. First, what do we know about why his approval rating has dipped? Second, how should we think about this current dip? That is, is it unusually large or actually pretty normal? And, finally, how much do presidents approval ratings matter, especially at this point in their presidency?
OK, first up, why has Bidens approval rating dipped?
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Trump Finishes With Worst First Term Approval Rating Ever
Poll of the week: A new Quinnipiac University poll finds that President Donald Trumps 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.
An average of recent polls finds Trump with a 39% approval rating and 58% disapproval rating.
Whats the point: A big question during the Trump presidency was whether anything could actually move the public opinion needle. It turns out that the insurrection at the US Capitol last week did exactly that.
Indeed, a number of non-Quinnipiac pollsters including CNN/SSRS , Gallup and the Pew Research Center also show Trump hitting his lowest level of support during his presidency.
The result is that Trumps final first term approval rating looks to be the lowest on record dating back since scientific polling began.
Heading into January, Trump had an average 44% approval rating to 53% disapproval rating. That was not significantly different from his 45% approval rating going into the election. That type of decline at the end of a presidency is historically large. Most presidents actually gain ground, and none have lost the type of ground Trump has.
It means Trump will be the first president in the polling era to end his first term with an approval of below 40%, the first with a disapproval rating north of 50% and the first with a negative net rating.
He has certainly made Republican lawmakers less leery of distancing themselves from him.
Why Donald Trumps Approval Rating Is So High Among Republicans
As the U.S. experienced mass unrest over police brutality and racial inequality, a huge spike in unemployment, and on the current count more than 116,000 coronavirus deaths, President Donald Trumps approval rating took an unsurprising turn for the worse.
But there is one group of voters who have remained squarely in Trumps corner in spite of the triple crises facing the nation: Republicans.
Over the past few months, the president has frequently gloated about his high party-approval figures. Tweeting about his approval rating among Republicans on Tuesday night, Trump wrote: 96% Approval Rating in the Republican Party. Thank you!
As The Washington Post reported at the end of May, the presidents evidence-free claim to have a 96 percent approval rating among GOP voters is not grounded in actual polling data.
Nevertheless, his rating among the Republican base has been consistently high over the last three months.
A new Morning Consult/Politico poll of 653 Republicans found 83 percent approved of Trumps record, a fall of only 5 percentage points from the pollsters March survey. The latest poll, conducted between June 12 to 14, has a 2 percentage point margin of error.
So how has the presidents approval rating among Republicans stayed so high, even amid unrest over race relations, unemployment, and public health?
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Most Voters Give Biden Positive Marks For His Job Performance
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56% of voters approve of Bidens job performance, compared with 46% who approved of Donald Trumps work at a similar point in 2017.
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91% of Democrats approve of Biden versus 83% of Republicans who said the same of Trump at this time four years ago.
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52% of voters hold favorable views of Vice President Kamala Harris, up 2 points from pre-inauguration polling, while 40% view her unfavorably, down 3 points over that time frame.
As the nation faces a pandemic, a weakened economy and political unrest that began under his predecessor, Joe Biden is enjoying a honeymoon with its voters.
Morning Consult Political Intelligence tracking conducted during the 46th presidents first few days in office shows 56 percent of voters approve of his job performance, while 34 percent disapprove. Bidens approval rating is 4 percentage points higher than the 52 percent who approved of former President Donald Trump in an early from Morning Consult and Politico his best-ever showing during his presidency and it looks even stronger compared to polling conducted at a similar point four years ago, when 46 percent approved of Trumps initial work.
The Jan. 22-24 poll of more than 11,000 registered voters, which has a 1-point margin of error, came after Bidens Jan. 20 inaugural address that focused on bridging Americas political divide received a warm reception from most voters, including those of the opposition party.
Jonah Goldberg: Theory On Why Trump Approval Rating So High
EARLY MONDAY morning, Donald Trump tweeted: 94% Approval Rating in the Republican Party, a record. Thank you!
Where the President got this specific number remains a mystery. Recent polls by YouGov put his GOP approval roughly 10 points lower, and Gallup, which has tracked Trumps popularity since he took office, puts him at 88 percent.
But I suppose we shouldnt be surprised that Trump used his Sharpie to round up his score. Hes deeply invested in being or at least claiming to be the most popular Republican President in history. In July of 2018, he announced: I am the most popular person in the history of the GOP. Beating Lincoln, Trump added. I beat our Honest Abe.
For what its worth, polling in the 1860s wasnt exactly reliable. But even if Trumps oft-repeated 94 percent number were accurate, and even if it beat Lincolns ratings, it still wouldnt beat George W. Bushs 99 percent after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Why the President feels the need to embellish is already a well-spelunked psychological rabbit hole. But even ignoring his exaggerations, he is consistently hitting in the mid- to high 80s with Republicans in polling, which demands a question: Why are his actual numbers so high?
George W. Bushs 99 percent might offer some insight. Americans generally rally around a President during a war or national crisis. But members of the Presidents own party in particular can be counted on to fall in line.
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What Would Make You Change Your Mind About Donald J Trump
When Michael Tesler, a political scientist at the University of California Irvine, tries to explain the amazing stability of Trumps approval in his classes, he starts with a question. He asks his students if theres anything Trump could do to make them support him. And hes invariably met by a sea of shaking heads. If you went into Trumps presidency thinking hes a racist, sexist, xenophobic, immoral, narcissistic, corrupt, and incompetent person beliefs held by most Clinton voters then theres literally almost nothing he could do to change your mind, says Tesler.
The same is true in reverse. If you see Trump as the protector of Western Civilization, as Charlie Kirk called him the other night at the RNC, or the protector of white America, as Desmond King and Rogers Smith have called him, defending cherished American values from atheist, left-wing socialists who want to take your guns and put Cory Booker in charge of diversifying your neighborhoods, then theres almost nothing that would make you abandon him, Tesler continues.
But how do we know if were being governed with a bare level of competence?
How Trumps Second Impeachment Will Work
To be sure, the national polls underestimated Trumps performance in the national election, which he lost by 4 percentage points after trailing in the RealClearPolitics average by 7 points and the FiveThirtyEight average by 8 points.
But the latest polls conducted over the past week all show significant drops in support for Trump from the previous measurements with one notable exception: Rasmussen Reports. The Republican-leaning automated pollster, which has typically produced stronger results for Trump, has shown that the presidents approval ratings have been virtually unaffected by last weeks events.
Trumps final approval rating is far from settled, given the congressional sprint to impeach him in the closing week of his presidency. But he is poised to go down as one of the most unpopular presidents upon leaving office.
Barack Obamas approval rating rose in the final weeks of his presidency, following Trumps upset victory in the 2016 election. According to theRealClearPolitics average, Obamas approval rating finished at 57 percent, rising about 5 points between the election and Trumps inauguration in January 2017.
Trump is likely to finish closer to Bushs final ratings: 34 percent in the finalGallup poll the best historical record for modern presidential approval and 29 percent in the closingRealClearPolitics average.
More details on the poll and its methodology can be found in these two documents:Toplines |Crosstabs
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Were Back To A World In Which A Weak Economy Hurts Presidential Approval
When Joe Biden was elected president, a common refrain was that he would usher in a new era of normalcy after four chaotic years of President Donald Trump. But in certain ways, normalcy hasnt returned. This is visible first and foremost in the inflation rate, which in May was higher than at any point since 1981.
But this growing inflation, and the resulting pessimism about the economy, has restored one thing to normal: the historical relationship between how Americans view the economy and how they view the president.
For a long time, its the economy, stupid was solid advice for understanding presidential approval. Approval increased when the economy grew. See, for example, Bill Clintons rising popularity during the robust economy of the late 1990s. And approval dropped during recessions as it did for George H.W. Bush in 1991.
But during the administrations of Barack Obama and Trump, this link between the economy and presidential approval appeared weaker, even nonexistent. This was evident in the relationship between presidential approval and the University of Michigan Survey Research Centers Index of Consumer Sentiment, a long-standing measure of economic evaluations that combines different questions about how people perceive their personal financial circumstances and business conditions in the country. This index has a historical low of 50 and a historical high of 112.
Six Theories Of Joe Bidens Crumbling Popularity
![Trump Trump](https://www.patriotsnet.com/wp-content/uploads/trumps-approval-rating-slides-despite-support-for-travel-ban-morning.png)
The presidents approval ratings keep falling. The question is why.
About the author: David A. Graham is a staff writer at The Atlantic.
The biggest mystery in American politics right nowand perhaps the most consequential oneis how Joe Biden became so unpopular.
Biden began his presidency moderately popular: At the start, Quinnipiac Universitys polling found that 53 percent of Americans approved of him and 36 percent did not. Todays numbers are the mirror image: In a Quinnipiac poll released yesterday, 36 percent approve, while 53 percent disapprove. FiveThirtyEights average of polls finds him doing slightly better42.8 to 51.7but still in a consistent slide since the end of July. The numbers are very polarized, but Republicans have always disapproved strongly of Biden the big difference here is erosion among Democrats and independents.
This reversal could have wide-ranging effects. Biden still hopes to pass a massive social-spending program, for which he needs uniform Democratic support. Depending on their understanding of the causes for the slide, members of Congress might defect. Bidens unpopularity may already have cost Democrats the Virginia governorship and nearly sunk Governor Phil Murphy of New Jersey too. If Biden is this unpopular in a year, congressional Democrats will be entirely swamped in the midterms.
Simple Gravity
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