Stunning Poll: Trump Leaves Office With Lowest Average Approval in Gallup’s Entire History — Lower Than Nixon

Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images

President Donald Trump will leave office with the lowest average approval rating in Gallup’s history, a result that is stunning for more than one reason.

On Monday, Gallup released the results of its final tracking poll, and it showed Trump with the lowest approval — 34 percent — of his entire presidency. On top of that, Trump finished with the lowest average approval of any president in Gallup’s history — by a lot:

As President Donald Trump prepares to leave the White House, 34% of Americans approve of the job he is doing as president, the worst evaluation of his presidency. His 41% average approval rating throughout his presidency is four points lower than for any of his predecessors in Gallup’s polling era. Trump’s ratings showed a record 81-percentage-point average gap between Republicans and Democrats — 11 points wider than the prior record.

Gallup

Gallup goes on to point out that Trump is also the only president in the history of the poll — which began in 1938 — never to have reached fifty percent, despite a few flirtations with the elusive benchmark. Although Trump didn’t quite reach Richard Nixon’s historic single-poll low of 26 percent, he shares with Nixon the distinction of being the only two presidents to score their worst approval ratings in their final poll.

But it’s also stunning that Trump tied Gallup’s all-time record for average approval by Republicans. Trump leaves office with an average approval rating of 88 percent among members of his adopted party, tied with Dwight D. Eisenhower — and a full five points higher than Ronald Reagan. Even in that final poll, a full 82 percent of Republicans said they approve of Trump.

Trump may have been spared an even lower final rating by the fact that the poll was taken between Jan. 4 and Jan. 15, meaning some of the responses were made before the Capitol insurrection that Trump incited.

Additionally, Gallup’s move away from daily tracking likely spared Trump from individual polling low water marks that were smoothed out by longer polling periods. At the beginning of Trump’s presidency, the tracking poll was based on a 3-day rolling average, but was gradually shifted to a monthly multi-day polling period.