Since his victory in the November election, President Donald Trump has seen a rise in his favorability ratings. However, he continues to be a divisive figure across the nation. As he embarks on his second term, Trump has made swift and bold moves, including threatening trade conflicts with allied nations, signing numerous executive orders, initiating deportation flights, and cutting foreign aid spending.
Despite the increase in his personal approval ratings, Trump still holds the record for the lowest favorability of any newly inaugurated president since polling on this metric began in 1953. According to the average of opinion polls tracked by Real Clear Politics, 48.8 percent of voters have a favorable view of Trump, while 47.9 percent view him unfavorably, resulting in a net positive score of 0.9 points as of Tuesday morning.
This figure has dipped slightly from his peak score of 1.2 points at the beginning of the month, which was his highest to date. While this score is relatively positive, it marks a significant shift from the nearly constant unfavorable ratings he has received since entering politics in 2015, with some differences exceeding 30 points. The findings align with a recent poll from DailyMail.com/J.L. Partners, indicating a shift among voters towards Trump and his policies.
Some 39 percent of respondents, in a poll of 1,009 registered voters just before the inauguration, said they had developed a more positive view of the 78-year-old former property mogul during the past two months. And his favorability rating moved up by three points.
It was perhaps not surprising, given the scale of his win, when he collected all seven battleground states and became the first Republican since George W. Bush (after 9/11) to claim victory in the popular vote. ‘More voters than is usual in our polarized system do seem to have genuinely rallied around him as he was inaugurated and, going by the popularity of his initial acts— especially deportation of illegal migrants – that’s no surprise,’ said J.L. Partners cofounder James Johnson.
‘Enthusiasm for Trump amongst his own voters was also at fever pitch levels during the election, and that is not going to fray straight away.’ But the honeymoon will not last forever, he added. ‘Part of this will be inevitable as the excitement fades and people’s attention moves elsewhere,’ he said. ‘And challenges – as well as unforced errors – plague the modern presidency.’
A tracker maintained by statistic website FiveThirtyEight showed a similar trend, although he has yet to record a net positive rating in its rolling average. The J.L. Partners survey attempted to unpick why voters may have moved towards Trump.
Voters who said they felt more positive about Trump were asked to give a one-word explanation. When the results were plotted in a word cloud, the most common answers were: Country, Trump, America, president.
It suggests he may have benefited from a post-election period when he limited his public appearances and social media commentary, and was seen as acting more presidentially and working for the good of the nation. Those who had a less favorable view cited the countries or territories that he has set his sights on: Canada, Greenland, Panama, and they used the word ‘felon.’
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