According to Gallup’s latest poll, Trump is set to end his first year in office with the lowest approval rating of any POTUS since the approval of presidents began getting tracked. Presently, only 39% approve of Trump’s performance, while 57% outright disapprove.
Before this low point, Bill Clinton held the record for the lowest first-year approval rating with 49% — still a whopping 10 points higher than Trump’s.
Since voters tend to be more forgiving of presidents during the beginning of their administrations while they’re still adjusting to the role, this makes Trump’s extreme unpopularity even more embarrassing than it would normally be.
And the new low hasn’t come suddenly — Trump’s weekly numbers have been consistently below 40%, and he’s spent more time under that mark than any of his predecessors.
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Trump, who’s proven to be obsessed with having the approval of the media and the public, has been in consistent denial about his low popularity. In August, he retweeted a Twitter poll on whether he or Barack Obama made a better president showing him in the lead; in December, he attempted to downplay reports of his low ratings by claiming that he had the same level of popularity Obama had had at that point of his presidency.
He wrote, “While the Fake News loves to talk about my so-called low approval rating, @foxandfriends just showed that my rating on Dec. 28, 2017, was approximately the same as President Obama on Dec. 28, 2009, which was 47%…and this despite massive negative Trump coverage & Russia hoax!â€
The poll he referenced, conducted by the typically right-leaning Rasmussen Reports, was in fact an outlier among other polls; Obama’s overall approval rating was nearly four points higher than Trump’s.
This is the latest sign that Trump will likely not last eight, if four, years in office.
