President Trump’s approval rating SOARS, hits highest mark since becoming president

President Trump’s job approval rating soared to its highest point since he took office in 2017, according to a new poll released Tuesday and conducted as the impeachment trial was underway in the Senate.

Among Republicans, Trump’s approval rating hit 94 percent — a 6 percentage point increase from Gallup’s results early last month. Independents gave Trump a 42 percent approval rating, up 5 percentage points.

Democrats’ approval rating fell to 7 percent from 10 percent.

The 87 percentage point gap between Democrats and Republicans surpassed the highest rate for both Trump and former President Barack Obama by one point. Obama hit that milestone in November 2012. Trump reached that level five times since entering the White House.

Trump Job Approval at Personal Best 49%

by Jeffrey M. Jones, Gallup Poll, February 5, 2020:

Story Highlights

• Approval among Republicans hits 94%
• Poll shows highest party polarization on record
• Half of registered voters say Trump deserves to be re-elected

WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Donald Trump’s job approval rating has risen to 49%, his highest in Gallup polling since he took office in 2017.

The new poll finds 50% of Americans disapproving of Trump, leaving just 1% expressing no opinion. The average percentage not having an opinion on Trump has been 5% throughout his presidency.

Trump’s approval rating has risen because of higher ratings among both Republicans and independents. His 94% approval rating among Republicans is up six percentage points from early January and is three points higher than his previous best among his fellow partisans. The 42% approval rating among independents is up five points, and ties three other polls as his best among that group. Democratic approval is 7%, down slightly from 10%.

The 87-point gap between Republican and Democratic approval in the current poll is the largest Gallup has measured in any Gallup poll to date, surpassing the prior record, held by Trump and Barack Obama, by one point.

The Jan. 16-29 poll was conducted in the midst of the Senate impeachment trial that will likely result in the president’s acquittal. The poll finds 52% of Americans in favor of acquitting Trump and 46% in favor of convicting and removing him from office.

In addition to possibly reflecting sentiment regarding his impeachment, Trump’s increased approval rating may also result from other issues, including:

• The recent military action in Iran. More Americans in the new poll approve (53%) than disapprove (45%) of the U.S. military action that resulted in the death of a leading Iranian military general. Iran retaliated but, despite fears of escalation, no further military action has been taken by either side.
• Foreign trade. During the poll’s field period, Trump also signed the United States-Mexico-Canada trade deal to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement.
• The economy. Americans’ confidence in the economy is higher than at any point in the past two decades. Similarly, national satisfaction is the highest in nearly 15 years.

Sixty-three percent of Americans now approve of the way Trump is handling the economy, up six points from the prior reading in November. It is the highest economic approval rating not only for Trump, but for any president since George W. Bush enjoyed stratospheric job approval ratings in the first few months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Trump’s ratings for handling foreign affairs (47%) and foreign trade (50%) are also his best to date.

Republican Party Image Also Improving

As Trump’s job approval rating has improved, so has the image of the Republican Party. Now, 51% of Americans view the Republican Party favorably, up from 43% in September. It is the first time GOP favorability has exceeded 50% since 2005.

Meanwhile, 45% of Americans have a positive opinion of the Democratic Party, a slight dip from 48% in September.

Additionally, the poll finds 48% of Americans identifying as Republicans or leaning toward that party, compared with 44% Democratic identification or leaning. Recent Gallup polls had shown a fairly even partisan distribution, after the Democratic Party held advantages for much of 2019.

Gallup observed similar public opinion shifts when Bill Clinton was impeached.

• Clinton’s approval rating spiked to a personal high of 73% after the House impeachment vote, and stayed above his pre-impeachment readings through his acquittal by the Senate in early 1999.
• A seven-point average Democratic advantage in party identification and leaning in two early December 1998 polls (49% to 42%) swelled to an average 17 points (53% to 36%) in two late December polls after the Dec. 19, 1998, impeachment vote.
• The latest impeachment saga has had a different effect on party favorable ratings, however. When Clinton was impeached, favorable ratings of the Democratic Party were unchanged (but high, at 57% and 58% in two December polls), while the GOP’s ratings plummeted, falling from 43% pre-impeachment to an all-time low of 31% after the House vote to impeach.

Election Context

Impeachment and a strong state of the nation may have brightened Trump’s election prospects, but U.S. registered voters are evenly divided at 50% as to whether he deserves re-election. When the question was last asked, just before the 2018 midterm elections, 41% of Americans thought Trump deserved a second term.

With the Democratic nomination campaign fully underway, 39% of registered voters say they will vote for Trump regardless of whom the Democratic Party nominates for president, while nearly the same percentage (36%) say they will vote against Trump regardless of whom the Democrats choose. Twenty-four percent of voters say they are waiting to see whom the Democrats nominate.

For their part, Democrats continue to prefer a nominee who can defeat Trump over a candidate closer to them on the issues. Fifty-six percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents want the party to nominate a candidate who has the best chance of beating Trump, even if the candidate does not agree with them on the issues they care most about, while 42% want a nominee who agrees with them on the issues but does not have the best chance of beating Trump. The current 14-point margin in favor of electability is smaller than the 24-point gap measured in November, suggesting Democrats may have a harder time settling for the eventual nominee if it’s someone they don’t agree with.

Democrats identify Joe Biden (44%) as the candidate they think has the best chance of beating Trump, followed by Bernie Sanders at 19% and Michael Bloomberg at 10%. Meanwhile, Democrats are most likely to name Sanders (28%) as the candidate who is closest to them on the issues, followed by Biden (20%) and Elizabeth Warren (16%).

Implications

Whether the rise in Trump’s approval rating and the Republican Party’s image is being driven by a backlash against impeachment, the strong economy or other factors may become clearer in the near future. If it is mostly impeachment-based, his approval rating may revert quickly back to pre-impeachment levels, as it did for Clinton. Within two months of his acquittal in February 1999, Clinton’s approval rating returned to where it was before he was impeached, as did the Democratic Party’s advantage in party identification and leaning.

If Trump’s higher approval rating is being driven by Americans giving him credit for improvements in the economy, his support may increase over the course of the year, as it did for Ronald Reagan in 1984, Clinton in 1996 and Barack Obama in 2012. All of those recent presidents held office during periods of sustained economic improvement and were re-elected with job approval ratings of better than 50%.

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patd

4 years ago

The only ones that disapprove of Trump are the ignorant moronic parasitic feral animal libturd dumocraps that hate America and having an American back in our WH!!!! Their TDS gets worse each day and they believe he will take their EBT away!

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felix1999

4 years ago

Reply to  patd

Unfortunately we have allot of them here.

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VTS

4 years ago

Reply to  patd

Approval should be above 60% by now.

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felix1999

4 years ago

Poor Mitch… his inlaws in the shipping business with China, might be taking a hit. Yes I know his wife heads our transportation dept. but that was in exchange for Mitch not putting the DEM Supreme Court Justice up for a vote. Trump knows more of what he is dealing with. China is well known for offering predatory loans globally for transportation and ports. Obama had us set up have China take over our second largest and busiest port – and you didn’t hear a whimper of objection from either the DEMS or the GOP, did you? Do you honestly think ANY of the GOP candidates Trump ran against would have cared or done anything about this when they didn’t object to Obama doing this in the first place?)

JUDICIAL WATCH – NEVER REPORTED in our MSM media –
Trump Rids Major U.S. Container Port of Chinese Communist Control
10/8/19
…
Under a long-term deal sealed by the Obama administration, a Chinese Communist company was set to control the second-busiest container port in the United States. In an unreported Trump administration victory, the Communists are out after a drawn-out national security review forced a unit of China-based COSCO Shipping Holdings Co. (Orient Overseas Container Line—OOCL) to sell the cherished container terminal business, which handles among the largest
freight of imports into the U.S.

(Think about the effect of that with importing and exporting – controlled by the Chicoms…)

It all started with a 40-year container terminal lease between the Port of Long Beach in southern California and Hong Kong. The Obama administration proudly signed the agreement in 2012 giving China control of America’s second-largest container port behind the nearby Port of Los Angeles. One of the Trump administration’s first big moves was to get the Communists out of the Port of Long Beach. After a national security review and federal intervention, the Long Beach terminal business, which handles millions of containers annually, is finally being sold to an Australian company called Macquarie Infrastructure Partners. That essentially kills China’s decades-long contract with the Obama administration.

The deal never should have been signed in the first place considering the facility’s size, significance and the national security issues associated with a hostile foreign government controlling it. The southern California port is the premier U.S. gateway for trans-Pacific trade, according to its website, and handles trade valued at more than $194 billion annually. It is one of the few ports that can accommodate the world’s largest vessels and serves 140 shipping lines with connections to 217 seaports around the world. The facility encompasses 3,200 acres with 31 miles of waterfront, 10 piers, 62 berths and 68 post-Panamax gantry cranes. In 2018, the Long Beach port handled more than 8 million container units, achieving the busiest year in its history.

(Obama prefers strengthening communism over capitalism.)

Removing Chinese Communists from this essential port is a tremendous feat and a huge victory for U.S. national security. You’d never know it because the media, consumed with the impeachment debacle, has ignored this important achievement. The only coverage of the finalized transfer is found in Long Beach’s local newspaper, which published a brief article omitting important background information on the Trump administration’s work to take back the terminal from the Communists. The story makes it seem like a regular business transaction in which “a Chinese state-owned company, reached a deal to sell the terminal, one of the busiest in the port, for $1.78 billion.” The piece also quotes the Port of Long Beach’s deputy executive director saying that the transaction process was intricate and involved one of “our most valuable port assets.” Buried at the bottom of the article is a sentence mentioning that the U.S. government, which regulates mergers for antitrust and security reasons, stepped in and required COSCO to sell its rights to the container terminal.

In the last few years China has bought cargo ports throughout the world, including in Latin America, the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean Sea. Chinese-owned ports are located in Greece, Italy, Spain and other European locations. In sub-Saharan Africa there are dozens of existing or planned port projects funded or operated by China, according to a study that highlights the threat the Chinese investments present to U.S. influence in the region. One troubling analysis points out that “COSCO’s commercial expansion has created leverage for Beijing — leverage that has already resulted in countries that host COSCO ports adopting China’s position on key international issues.”

(This is economic blackmail being used for political empowering.)

https://www.judicialwatch.org/corruption-chronicles/trump-rids-major-u-s-container-port-of-chinese-communist-control/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=corruption_chronicles

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Rick Gouveia

4 years ago

Reply to  felix1999

Leftists, together with ChiComs, have been planning a US civil war since 2012 to gain full power. Ever since 2012, when Obama gave the ChiComs full control of a major US shipping port, the Chicoms have been developing portable WMD’s hidden in shipping containers. Trump neutralized this threat; God bless and protect † USA †.

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DVader

4 years ago

Most polls still show him stuck in his usual range of the low 40s. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/

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volksnut

4 years ago

Not really all that happy with the rest of the repubs – i still believe we needed and thank God its come to pass – someone OUTSIDE the political ” establishment ” – demorat OR repub ..

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