Trump’s Approval Rating Is Low, but Many Americans Are Willing to Give Him a Chance

At Saturday’s Women’s March in New York City, a sign denounces President Trump’s use of Twitter. (mathiaswasik / CC BY-SA 2.0)

Donald Trump is not Mr. Popular these days, but some Americans are willing to wait and see what the new president will do.

Since President Trump took office, he has garnered the lowest approval ratings at this point in the last three presidencies, reflecting, among other things, dissatisfaction with his Twitter use and his direction for the country. According to a Gallup poll that tracks Trump’s approval ratings day by day, national approval is at 46 percent as of Thursday. In comparison, the last two administrations held higher approval ratings in their first days: Barack Obama at 67 percent and George W. Bush at 57 percent.

Despite the new president’s low ratings, some Americans are still willing to give Trump a chance, according to icitizen, a nonpartisan app that aims to “make civic engagement easy.” Of the 1,410 people who took icitizen’s recent poll—a majority of whom showed disapproval of Trump—more than half said that he is their president and they want to “see what he can do.” Thirty-one percent of respondents claimed to have unfavorable views of his administration yet are willing to allow the president to prove himself in his first 100 days.

The online poll showed a breakdown of reactions to the president’s first four days. Among the findings: 75 percent of women under 50 believe Trump has “set a negative tone for his administration,” and 60 percent of millennials (ages 18 to 34), as well as 10 percent of Republicans indicated they believe President Trump will “not keep many” or keep “none” of his campaign promises.

Women and millennials who took part in the poll strongly evaluated the president negatively in the days since his inauguration. The findings were similar to November exit polls. A majority of women voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, though a sizable number—mostly white women—cast their votes for Trump.

The respondents to icitizen’s poll identified with various political parties, but most were white and college-educated women and men. The four age groups—from young adults to senior citizens—were equally represented.

The icitizen findings also revealed that a majority of those polled agreed with Inauguration Day protests, approved of President Obama’s transition of power, disapproved of where the country is heading and said they had an unfavorable opinion of the new president.

This seemingly widespread distrust of the Trump administration breaks the mold for new presidents. The Washington Post’s Philip Bump writes, “The pattern over the course of Gallup’s history of tracking presidential approval has been that the incoming president’s first approval rating is higher than the outgoing president’s last one.”

Bump continues:

Excluding transitions that occurred due to resignation or death, there have been three times when a new president has had lower initial ratings than the outgoing one: When George H.W. Bush replaced the very-popular Ronald Reagan in 1989, when Bush’s son replaced Bill Clinton in 2001—and in 2017. Every other time, the new guy seemed to get more of the benefit of the doubt.

If icitizen’s and Gallup’s polls are evidence, President Trump has a lot of work to do to garner the majority of Americans’ approval in the next 93 days.

—Posted by KiMi Robinson