Donald Trump’s Disapproval Rating Reportedly Higher Than Any Other President At This Point Of His Term
President Donald Trump’s overall disapproval rating is on the rise and the latest numbers reflect that his is the worst for this point of the term than any other president dating back to Harry S. Truman. Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight shared the details and the latest trends.
On Tuesday afternoon, Silver shared an overview of a handful of these statistics via his Twitter page.
“Trump’s disapproval rating has been on the rise again, now up to 54%. There were some presidents with lower approval ratings to this point in their first terms, but no president had a higher *disapproval* rating than Trump now has,” Silver tweeted.
Silver’s post referred people to the page tracking Trump’s approval, disapproval, and net approval ratings on FiveThirtyEight. The page breaks down the approval and disapproval ratings of each president going back to Truman, offering up comparisons at this point of Trump’s term as well as in comparison to four-year and eight-year terms.
The approval and disapproval ratings on Silver’s site are not from any singular political poll. Instead, they are a calculation of numerous polls, weighted for recency, partisan lean, sample size, and poll quality.
As of 1,230 days into Trump’s presidency, he sits at a 54 percent disapproval and 42.7 percent approval rating. In comparison, President Barack Obama’s disapproval rating 1,230 days into his presidency sat at 47.1 percent.
The numbers showed two other presidents whose disapproval rating was over 50 percent at this stage of their term. George H.W. Bush had a disapproval rating of 51.5 and Jimmy Carter’s was 52 percent. In addition, George W. Bush sat at 49.9 percent at this point.
On the flip side, a number of former presidents were well under that mark at this stage of their term. Bill Clinton’s disapproval rating was 37.5, and Ronald Reagan’s was 38. Richard Nixon’s disapproval rating was just 28.8 percent at this same point in time.
In a matter of months, everybody will see where Trump’s disapproval rating stands at the end of this term. Of those analyzed, Carter was the only president whose disapproval rating was still more than 50 percent at the end of his first term. He had a 55 percent disapproval rating, and Lyndon B. Johnson’s disapproval was the next worst at 45.9 percent.
As Silver noted, Trump’s approval rating right now is better than some previous presidents at the same point in their term. Based on the data on Silver’s site, it appears that this is the case in comparison to Carter, George H.W. Bush, and Truman.
While Silver doesn’t pinpoint specific reasons for Trump’s disapproval ratings climbing right now, it seems likely that both the coronavirus pandemic and national protests after George Floyd’s death are both contributing factors. Many will be interested to see how these numbers fluctuate in the weeks and months ahead leading up to the 2020 election in November.
