Trump's approval rating hits record lows in two big polls

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published 31 October 2017

On Monday, President Trump hit a new low in Gallup's three-day polling average, at 33 percent approval and 62 percent disapproval, a 29-point favorability deficit. Since Dwight D. Eisenhower, only two presidents have ever recorded Gallup numbers that low: Richard Nixon and George W. Bush. In an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released on Sunday, Trump also hit a new low, 38 percent approval and 58 percent disapproval, a sharp decline from September.

"The daily Gallup numbers tend to be noisy," says Phillip Bump at The Washington Post. "As a result, we instead prefer to look at Gallup’s weekly averages — in which Trump sank back down to his low of 35 percent," hit back in early September. In the NBC/WSJ poll, Trump's drop "has come from independents (who shifted from 41 percent approval in September to 34 percent now), whites (who went from 51 percent to 47 percent), and whites without a college degree (from 58 percent to 51 percent)," all parts of his base, NBC News says. No president in modern times has hit 38 percent this early in his presidency.

The Gallup daily average "includes surveys conducted on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, the latter two days of which followed initial revelations that indictments were imminent," Bump notes. "Whether the indictments themselves will push Trump lower — or help move him higher — remains to be seen." The NBC/WSJ poll was conducted Oct. 23-26 among 900 adults and has a margin of error of ±3.3 percentage points.

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.

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