Donald Trump Approval Rating: Polls Suggest Tweeting To Blame For Low Rating
President Donald Trump’s approval rating is not good for a president who hasn’t been in office for two months. And new polls suggest that this has a lot to do with his personality and temperament, primarily his penchant for speaking his mind — some say too much of it — on Twitter.
A recent USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll released on Tuesday suggested that Donald Trump’s approval rating didn’t get the boost that would have been expected from last week’s Congressional address, or the increased optimism regarding the state of America under the Trump presidency. According to the poll, which ran from Wednesday, March 1 through Sunday, March 5, only 47 percent of respondents see him as doing a good job, while 44 percent disapprove of his leadership. That’s a slight improvement over previous polls, but historically, it remains well below-average for a new president at such an early point in his term.
About two-thirds of respondents said that they are especially against Trump’s temperament, representing a much greater disapproval percentage than that for his policies. About 60 percent, including about four-tenths of all Republicans surveyed, said that the President tweets too much.
Polls show that President Trump’s personality is hurting his approval ratings https://t.co/PpAOdYEcZ0 pic.twitter.com/YeMnc5ItTM
— Zesty Liberal News (@zesty_liberal) March 9, 2017
One respondent, University of Arizona professor Linda Shaw, said that she is especially concerned about what she sees as Trump’s lack of focus in his job, as well as his lack of maturity, and the “ever-present degree of narcissism and lack of judgment” in his statements and decisions.
“Far from clearing-the-swamp, the swamp is teeming and overflowing, and I have serious concerns about the future of the country if the course continues as it currently is.”
The USA TODAY/Suffolk poll, however, hints that Americans are more optimistic regarding certain aspects of Donald Trump’s presidency. According to CBS News, 46 percent believe that America is “moving in the right direction,” a 12 percent improvement from the last time the poll was taken in December. Fifty-two percent of respondents said that the U.S. economy appears to be on the mend; the poll suggests that this is a “high number” that hasn’t often been seen since the 2008 global financial crisis.
At the same time the USA TODAY poll was released, Quinnipiac University released another poll, showing Donald Trump’s approval rating at 41 percent, with 52 percent disapproving of his performance. Like an earlier Quinnipiac survey that focused mainly on his personal traits, this new poll saw Americans mostly approving of his intelligence (64 percent), yet disapproving of his perceived dishonesty (55 percent).
The suggestion that Donald Trump’s approval rating has suffered through his use of Twitter comes about a month after a well-documented incident where the President took to social media to react to his poor performance on polls. According to a February report from Salon, Trump tweeted that media polls suggesting a poor or mediocre approval rating are “fake news,” while in his view, American citizens would rather prefer “border security” and “extreme vetting” of immigrants.
Any negative polls are fake news, just like the CNN, ABC, NBC polls in the election. Sorry, people want border security and extreme vetting.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 6, 2017
I call my own shots, largely based on an accumulation of data, and everyone knows it. Some FAKE NEWS media, in order to marginalize, lies!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 6, 2017
The polls released ahead of that controversial statement, however, suggested the opposite. Salon cited a CNN/ORC poll that showed 53 percent of Americans were against Trump’s travel ban on Muslim refugees and immigrants, with 49 percent saying that they believe the ban does not mesh with American values. In another poll question, 60 percent said that they are against Trump’s plans to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Meanwhile, FiveThirtyEight has maintained a running graph tracking Trump’s popularity as president, “accounting for each poll’s quality, recency, sample size, and partisan lean.” Following the addition of polls from YouGov, Gallup, and Rasmussen Reports/Pulse Opinion Research, all of which have Donald Trump’s approval rating below the 50 percent mark, 49.2 percent of Americans disapprove of the president, while only 44.3 percent approve of him. Out of the most recent ten polls included in the graph, only three of them have higher approval than disapproval ratings for the President.
[Featured Image by Alex Wong/Getty Images]
