According to a recent exclusive Daily Mail/J.L. Partners poll, President Donald Trump’s approval rating has slightly risen among voters, despite them marking him poorly for his handling of the Jeffrey Epstein documents.
Forty-nine percent of voters now approve of Trump’s job performance as president, up one point from the tracking survey conducted earlier in July.
However, he remains in unfavorable standing, with 51 percent disapproving of his performance, just a one-point dip from earlier in the month. The survey of 1,007 registered voters has a 3.1 percent margin of error.
These polling results indicate that Trump is managing to maintain his political footing during a challenging news cycle dominated by the Epstein documents and his administration’s failure to release them, contrary to campaign pledges.
The president’s job approval is up one percentage point from June and remains his highest rating since May.
‘The news saga might have seemed terrible for Trump in the last few days, but it isn’t having an impact on his approval rating,’ James Johnson, JL Partners co-founder told the Daily Mail.
‘In fact, we think it’s going up, from 48 percent to 49 percent, making this his best approval rating since May. His ratings with the base is holding up too, unchanged on 91 percent with Republicans,’ Johnson continued.
But Trump’s strong job approval ratings does not carry over to his handling of the Epstein files.
US President Donald Trump participates in a reception with Republican Members of Congress in the East Room as approval ratings tick up
Forty-two percent of voters disapprove of his handling of the issue while just 27 percent approve.
A significant number of voters, 20 percent, did not appear to care about the case as they neither approved nor disapproved Trump’s handling of the issue.
In the Oval Office on Wednesday, Trump referred to the ongoing saga as a ‘witch hunt’ indicating he was tired of answering questions from the media about it.
Despite the president’s best efforts to put the issue behind him, few voters believe in the administration’s assessment of the case.
Only fifteen percent in the poll said they believed the Justice Department’s memo released by Attorney General Pam Bondi concluding that Epstein committed suicide in prison and that the infamous pedofile did not have a ‘client list’ they could release.
Forty-seven percent said they did not believe the administration’s account of the Epstein case, and that they believed there was more secrets to uncover.
Twenty-three percent said they believed the Trump administration memo, but that there was more to uncover in the case.
‘This is despite voters disapproving of his handling of the Epstein scandal. What explains the difference? Voters simply do not rate it highly on their list of priorities,’ Johnson said.
President Donald Trump raises his fist after speaking during a reception for Republican members of Congress
Ninety percent of the Republican voter base continue to grant the president solid approval ratings, despite their misgivings about the Epstein files.
The poll was conducted as Trump furiously contested a Wall Street Journal report that he had signed a letter to Epstein for his 50th birthday which concluded: ‘Happy Birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret,’ and featured a hand-drawn image of a naked woman as well as his signature.
Trump decried the news article as ‘fake’ and filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the company.
‘They are judging Trump on other issues – such as the economy, the southern border, and how he is actually running the country. Their grumbles on the Epstein handling are not enough for them to turn on their man,’ Johnson said.
While the majority of Republicans, 52 percent, give Trump a passing grade on his handling of the Epstein files, just 13 percent of Independent voters feel the same way.
Fifty percent of independent voters in the survey said they disapproved of the way the Trump administration has handled the Epstein files case.
