Dem 47
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GOP 53
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Trump Has Near-Record Low Approval for New Term

FiveThirtyEight has started to track Donald Trump's approval over time here. Lots of organizations are asking this question constantly, so there is plenty of data to plot.

An interesting question is: "How is Trump's approval/disapproval compared to other presidents at the start of their respective terms?" Here are the numbers on that:

President Election Approve Disapprove Net
John Kennedy (D) 1960 72.0% 6.0% +66.0
Dwight Eisenhower (R) 1952 68.0% 7.0% +61.0
Jimmy Carter (D) 1976 66.0% 8.0% +58.0
Richard Nixon (R) 1968 59.0% 5.0% +54.0
George H.W. Bush (R) 1988 61.5% 12.3% +49.3
Barack Obama (D) 2008 63.3% 16.5% +46.9
Ronald Reagan (R) 1980 51.0% 13.0% +38.0
Bill Clinton (D) 1992 54.4% 20.3% +34.1
George W. Bush (R) 2000 44.9% 17.0% +27.9
Joe Biden (D) 2020 53.5% 31.7% +21.8
Donald Trump (2) (R) 2024 49.8% 42.8% +7.0
Donald Trump (1) (R) 2016 44.6% 41.4% +3.2

What is amazing is that the first four presidents on the list, two Democrats and two Republicans, started with a disapproval under 10%. That is unthinkable now. It is totally inconceivable that any Democrat or any Republican could get more than half of the other party's voters to approve of them. Most Republicans automatically hate every Democrat and vice-versa.

The good news for Trump is that his net approval rating now is not the worst for a new president in the past 70 years. The booby prize goes to... Donald Trump in 2016. Still, less than half of Americans approve of Trump, and this is before he really starts to carry out his program, many parts of which are deeply unpopular.

And even the parts of his program that are popular—say, deporting undocumented immigrants—could lower his approval if he botches how they are done. It is not hard to imagine deportation raids that sweep up people grabbing some American citizens who were born in the country. Or worse yet, raids where ICE ends up killing American citizens who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. And what about Trump's tariffs, which could cause inflation to take off again? People who voted for him simply because they expected him to lower the cost of eggs won't be too happy.

Historically, almost all presidents get less popular over time. They all tend to get a "honeymoon period" at the start where people who voted against the president's opponent, as opposed to for the president, are willing to wait and see how it goes. Very often, they don't get a lot done at first, or what they get done doesn't please the voters who were lukewarm on the president to start with. And when you are starting under 50% approval, getting into the 30s isn't that hard, especially with many controversial actions. (V)



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