Donald Trump Polls Reveal Disaster For Incoming President: Historically Unpopular, No Mandate — But Trump Claims ‘Rigged’
New polls agree this week that the Donald Trump presidency may already be in big trouble, with an overwhelming majority of the American public holding a negative view of the reality-TV-star-turned-president-elect, just days before Trump is set to be inaugurated at the 45th president of the United States.
A poll from Gallup released last week and two new polls made public on Tuesday by ABC News/Washington Post and CNN/ORC all show Trump’s approval ratings at all-time lows compared to any president-elect since Gallup and other pollsters began compiling favorability ratings for incoming U.S. presidents.
The ABC News poll shows that only 40 percent of Americans view Trump favorably — while 61 percent have a favorable opinion of the outgoing president, Barack Obama.
The CNN/ORC poll shows Trump with a favorability rating of just 44 percent.
Trump, for his part, dismissed the polls as “rigged” to deliberately make him look bad.
The same people who did the phony election polls, and were so wrong, are now doing approval rating polls. They are rigged just like before.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 17, 2017
“The same people who did the phony election polls, and were so wrong, are now doing approval rating polls. They are rigged just like before,” Trump wrote on his Twitter account Tuesday.
But the election polls were not “phony” or highly inaccurate, predicting that Trump’s Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton would win the popular vote by 3.2 percentage points, according to the polling average calculated by Real Clear Politics.
Trump’s 40% favorable is about half of Obama’s pre-inauguration rating… https://t.co/SP3PqecOfm #GallupDaily pic.twitter.com/FMkSMSzmTp
— GallupNews (@GallupNews) January 16, 2017
When all of the votes were finally counted late last month, Clinton emerged as the popular vote winner by 2.1 points, well within the range of “normal” polling error, defeating Trump by a comprehensive 2.9 million votes, forcing Trump to enter office with the support of only a minority of voters.
Trump gave no evidence or reason why he believed the favorability rating polls to be “rigged,” other than that they showed him with an extremely low rating.
The dismal numbers could spell disaster for Trump’s ability to make good on his best-known campaign promises — especially because polling numbers show that most if those policy proposals are also highly unpopular with the American public.
According to the ABC News/Washington Post poll, Americans are against building a wall along the Mexican border — perhaps Trump’s most significant and often-repeated promise — by a margin of 60 against to 37 percent in favor.
Americans also oppose tax cuts for the wealthy by 61 to 36. They are against banning Muslim non-citizens from entering the country 63 to 32, and also oppose United States withdrawal from the Paris climate accords by 56 percent to 31.
On January 10, Quinnipiac University released a poll showing Trump with a 37 percent favorable rating, with 51 percent — a majority — saying that they actively held an unfavorable view of Trump.
In the CNN/ORC poll, Trump’s favorable rating has actually dropped a full six points since the November 8 election.
Compared to other incoming presidents over the past four decades, Trump’s favorability ratings appear even more dire. In ABC News/Washington Post polling since 1977 — covering seven different incoming presidents — only Ronald Reagan leading up to his 1981 inauguration had an approval rating below 60 percent, coming in at 58.
Even George W. Bush who, like Trump, lost the popular vote in his election came into his 2001 inauguration with a healthy 62 percent approval rating.
The highest favorability of any incoming president of the seven since 1977 was Barack Obama in 2009, who recorded an eye-popping 79 percent favorable rating just before his inauguration. Obama’s number topped the rating held by Jimmy Carter in 1977, who recorded a 78 percent favorable number.
Of the 40% who view Trump favorably, how many know he’s planning on accepting money from foreign gov’ts through his business as president? pic.twitter.com/XFsXiauU45
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) January 17, 2017
In the CNN/ORC poll, not only did Americans take an overwhelmingly negative view of Trump himself, but 52 percent also said that his policy objectives do not reflect their own priorities, another number which may indicate that Trump faces an extremely rocky road once he takes office as president on Friday afternoon.
[Featured Image By Seth Wenig/AP Images]
