Donald Trump blames historic low approval rating on ‘rigged’ polls

“The same people who did the phony election polls, and were so wrong, are now doing approval rating polls”, wrote Donald Trump in a tweet about the poll on Tuesday. Only 50 percent of Americans polled by ABC said they believed he could help the middle class and handle the budget deficit.

Trump scored an approval rating of just 40 percent in a new CNN / ORC poll.

That’s not to say that approval ratings before someone is even sworn in are an indicator of his performance once he becomes president. That gap explains the difference between Obama’s approval rating and those of the two former presidents who left office with higher marks. Throughout the presidential race, Trump repeatedly blasted news organizations that placed Hillary Clinton ahead of him in the polls. But in the last few years, the share of Americans with positive ratings of the economy has more than doubled to 51 percent in this month’s survey, their highest level tracked by Post-ABC polls during his tenure. Although a 52 per cent majority say he is not qualified to be president, that number is an improvement for Trump in the poll. Sixty-one percent said they had just some or no confidence.

As judged by popular opinion at the end of his term, President Obama is regarded about as well as Presidents John F. Kennedy and George H.W. Bush, and almost as well as Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan, who historians rank in the top quartile of presidents.

Mr Obama will vacate the Oval Office on Friday and hand power to Donald Trump.

Obama had an 84 percent approval rating during his inauguration in 2009, according to the CNN poll. In fact, just a week before Election Day, only 34 percent of Americans said they approved of the real estate tycoon-turned politician.

These young voters are bracing themselves for specific policy changes promised by the incoming Trump administration. The percentage of Americans unfamiliar with Pence is also slightly higher than it was for his predecessors. Among independents, 71 percent in May said all candidates should release their tax returns, compared with 41 percent last week who said it matters to them that Trump hasn’t released his returns. Conversely, 18 percent of Republicans approve of him but that’s better than 7 percent in March 2015. Even Republicans were about evenly split, with 49 percent saying he should close the @realDonaldTrump account, compared to 45 percent who disagreed.

“People are puring into Washington in record numbers”.

The poll surveyed 1,005 adults January 12-15 and has a 3.5 point margin of error. Results for the full sample have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points; it is higher for subgroups.