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The irony is profound: Donald Trump, a man who craves adulation and perhaps deification, is the least-liked American president ever.
Trump’s approval ratings have reached historic lows. He’s polling lower than he did at the same point in his first term, and he suffers net-negative approval ratings in all but nine states. Americans overwhelmingly reject him, his policies, and his job performance as president. In fact, if the third of Americans who comprise his bedrock base of red-hatted MAGAs are held aside, the rest of the nation is now nearly unified in deeming Trump’s second term a failure, if not a disaster.
No matter the pollster or topic, no matter how questions are phrased nor the subgroup of Americans tracked, Trump and his policies are disfavored, even despised. His numbers were bad before he started his reckless Iran war and they have fallen further since. And most recent approval ratings came before Trump began circulating images that likened him to Jesus. (More on that at the end.)
Per pollster G. Elliott Morris, comparing Trump to other recent presidents 15 months into their terms confirms how badly the public rates him. At -21.6 net negative approval, Trump lags behind Joe Biden (-10.8), Barack Obama (+2.3), and a post-9/11 George W. Bush (+57.0) at comparable points of their terms. In fact, Trump already lags more than 8 points behind the 15-month mark of his own first term (-13.3).
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Even if his current term is treated as a second term — when presidents tend to experience declining approval — the comparisons are still grim.
At the end of the first year of their second terms, only the Watergate-addled Nixon had a lower net approval number, -29.6, than the -16.2 net disapproval Trump had at the end of his fifth combined year in office. And that low rating came three months ago, before the ICE/CBP shootings in Minneapolis and the Iran war eroded Trump’s support by another five points and counting.
Strongly disapproved
Let’s start with Trump’s overall approval ratings.
A couple weeks ago, UMass-Amherst delivered Trump his worst approval/disapproval splits to date, with 62 percent disapproving his performance and just 33 percent approving, a net -29 approval rate.
Reuters/IPSOS has Trump doing slightly better at net -26, with 62 percent of Americans disapproving to just 36 percent approving, and a new CBS/YouGov poll this week came in at -22 net, 61 percent to 39 percent. The Economist’s latest results show a record low net negative approval of -20 for their survey. Even Napolitan News Service’s conservative-tilted pollster RMG Research pegs Trump at 58 percent to 40 percent, or -18 net disapproval. Overall, per Silver Bulletin’s weighted composite model, Trump is net -16, 56 percent to 40 percent.
More remarkable is that Nate Silver’s poll-of-polls shows that, of those 57%, fully 47% of Americans strongly disapprove.
In its February poll, NPR/Marist was the first to report an absolute majority of 51 percent strongly disapproving Trump’s performance. Even Scott Rasmussen’s RMG poll, regarded as conservative-leaning, found Trump’s strong disapproval rate at 46 percent.
Bottom line? Trump has lost the country. And half of Americans are beyond having soured on him — they’re sick of him.