President Trump’s approval rating started off mediocre and is now downright awful

Donald Trump’s approval rating started off remarkably bad for a new president, and it just keeps getting worse.

On Tuesday, the president hit a new low in the RealClearPolitics average, dropping to just 39.8 percent job approval, compared with 53.3 percent disapproval.

The past month — which contained both the collapse of the Republican health bill and the revelation that the FBI is investigating whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia — has been particularly disastrous for Trump. His net approval has moved from about 6 points underwater to 13.5 points. The trend is dramatic:

RealClearPolitics

Other poll averaging sites, like HuffPost Pollster and FiveThirtyEight, show a similar trend. Trump’s approval started off mediocre and quickly became outright bad, in contrast to other presidents, who have typically started off popular.

Now, to put this in a bit of historical perspective:

• Trump’s approval rating is already about where Obama’s and Bill Clinton’s were at the lowest points of their respective presidencies.
• Trump’s approval of about 40 percent is still higher than George W. Bush’s was for most of his second term — Bush tended to be in the mid- to low 30s.
• Of course, the outcome of the 2016 election should remind us all that polls can be off. But we should also remember that the errors there were mainly from polls in certain states, and that the national polls actually were pretty close to accurate. And even if these polling averages are all off somewhat, the direction of the trend is still clear — and it’s bad for Trump.

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