Donald Trump Approval Rating Remains At Historic Low, Polls Show Women Key To Trump’s 2020 Reelection Hopes

Another tumultuous week has gone by and Donald Trump’s approval rating, despite a very slight uptick, has remained at a historically low level, registering at only 42.2 percent. Of those polled, 53 percent say that they actively disapprove of Trump, according to the statistically weighted average of all Trump approval rating polls compiled by the data-crunching site FiveThirtyEight. While after 535 days in office, Trump ranks a slim 0.1 percentage point higher than President Jimmy Carer after his first 535 days in 1978, and 9.2 points higher than the rating suffered by Harry Truman, who inherited the office after the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Trump’s rating is well below every other president since 1945.

Truman enjoyed a high rating of 87 percent, according to the Washington Post, as he basked in the afterglow of the World War II victory in Europe. But a little more than a year later, Truman’s approval took a beating, dropping as low 36 percent after he ordered the racial integration of the U.S. armed forces, costing him most of his support in southern states, according to the history blog Presidential History Geeks.

Carter was plagued by an economy ravaged by double-digit inflation in 1978, which later that year led him to push for strict austerity measures on government spending, according to the Washington Post.

But while Trump was expected to receive a boost in the polls after his supposed diplomatic outreach to North Korea, as The Telegraph reported, no significant bump ever materialized.

Trump’s approval rating did tick up slightly compared to his rating of 41.8 percent seven days earlier, as the Inquisitr reported. However, his disapproval rating also showed a slight, but larger increase in the FiveThirtyEight average, rising from 52.3 percent on July 1, to an even 53 percent on July 8.

Trump’s handling of the immigration issue, in light of his policy of taking children from their parents often with no hope of reuniting the families, has been a drag on his approval ratings, it appears. According to a Washington Post-Schar School poll released last week, a whopping 59 percent of Americans do not approve of how Trump has handled immigration, while only 39 percent approve. In fact, 44 percent of Americans say that they “strongly” disapprove of Trump’s approach to immigration, in the Post-Schar poll.

The same poll gave Trump a 43 percent approval rating, in line with the FiveThirtyEight average. But only 19 percent — fewer than one in five Americans — said that they “strongly” approve of Trump’s job performance, indicating that even his support remains “soft.”

But according to an analysis by Post Chief Correspondent Daniel Balz, Trump’s biggest area of vulnerability in the 2020 presidential election will come from women, who show the strongest disapproval of Trump.

Even among Republican women, who say they support Trump at an 82 percent rate, only 31 percent say that they “strongly” approve of Trump. Among Republican men, 91 percent approve of Trump, and 68 percent “strongly” approve.

Across the political spectrum, Trump enjoys 54 percent approval among men, and 45 percent disapproval, according to the Post-Schar poll. But among women overall, only 32 percent register a positive impression of Trump and an overwhelming 65 percent view him negatively.

“Distrust of the president is greater among women. Women are more likely to say the president is damaging important American values rather than protecting them: 54 percent to 29 percent,” Balz wrote. “By 76 percent to 24 percent, they say the president tells the truth only some of the time or hardly ever rather than all or most of the time. Among men, it’s 59 percent to 41 percent.”

Trump’s standing with women was likely damaged further by his remarks at a campaign rally this week, as the Washington Post reported, when he envisioned bringing a DNA test to a possible presidential debate with Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, and appeared to mock the “MeToo” movement against sexual harassment and abuse of women, implying that women who complain about abuse are being oversensitive.