Trump's approval ratings are now lower than when Republicans lost the House

(Image credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

published 10 September 2019

President Trump can, on occasion, be unpredictable, but his approval numbers aren't.

He's the only commander-in-chief in the polling era never to never cross the 50 percent threshold, CNBC reports. His Gallup Poll peak is 46 percent and his low his 35 percent, good for an average of 40 percent to date; in Gallup's latest poll, he's right there again with a 39 percent approval rating. The consistency is not inconsequential when considering Trump's long-term electoral prospects, the Century Foundation's Ruy Teixeira told CNBC.

In 2018, just before the Republicans lost control of the House in the mid-term elections, Trump was at his normal 40 percent Gallup approval rating, while 54 percent of those surveyed disapproved of his performance. He's only budged slightly since then — and in the wrong direction, to boot. CNBC's John Hardwood notes that when former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were routed by Republicans in the 1994 and 2010 midterms, respectively, they bounced back in their approval polls before winning re-election in 1996 and 2012.

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Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.

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