How Unpopular is Trump Really??

The other day I was involved in a debate where the topic of Trump's popularity cropped up, I think it’s an interesting topic so done some research into it and figured it could make for an interesting ATS thread. Now I just want to be clear, my intention with this thread is not to say that anyone is right or wrong for supporting Trump rather it’s just to generate discussion around his (un)popularity.

Now objectively I believe Trump to be an unpopular president, just like I am sure many of you might regard him as being popular, indeed on ATS I think it’s fair to say that President Trump is popular among the membership. Although this is not a subjective or even accurate measure of his popularity. The measure used mostly to look at the popularity, or approval ratings of world leaders is to look at how they are polling among the electorate.

Perhaps the best source for polling information comes from FiveThirtyEight who aggregate polls looking at Trumps popularity from a verity of sources to create an overview of a range of polling information. At time of writing this thread Trump has an approval rating of only 41% with a 53% disapproval rating. Now to be clear, these numbers are bad, and they are consistently bad, in fact, Trumps overall approval ratings for his first year and a half in office have been the worst of any President in recent history. When you look at the aggregate of polls he has never broke the 50% approval rating. The most recent YouGov poll shows that overall 41% of the participants "Strongly disapprove" of him with only 29% reporting to "Strongly approve" of him something that is consistent other polls

I know that many of you reading this might argue that the polls are bias in some way, that they target individuals who disapprove of Trump. However, this argument is flawed because even if you look polls coming from conservative sources such as Fox News who have been supportive of Trump his polling numbers are still abysmal with is approval number being below 50%. There are also polls from Rasmussen Report, which some have argued to be a right-leaning polling group who have also struggled to provide data that shows strong support for Trump. Their polling consistently demonstrates that amounts most participants more strongly disapprove of trump than strongly approve. It is worth noting however that they have at times demonstrated that Trump has broken the 50% mark however they seem to be the only pollsters who have demonstrated this, and their data is at odds with all other pollsters and it’s not regarded as high grade poll with a C+ rating.

Trumps unpopularity is not isolated just to America, international polls looking at his popularity have also consistently demonstrated that he is unpopular. He is globally regarded as being less popular than the Russian and Chinese leaders (link). Under Trump global approval of US leadership is the lowest it has ever been (Link) with the Guardian reporting that.

Global confidence in US leadership has fallen to a new low, and the country now ranks below China in worldwide approval ratings, according to a new Gallup poll.

The survey of opinion in 134 countries showed a record collapse in approval for the US role in the world, from 48% under Obama to 30% after one year of Donald Trump – the lowest level Gallup has recorded since beginning its global leadership poll over a decade ago.

Some of you who have taken the time to read through this entire thread will no doubt want to question the validity of polling by making the point that the pollsters were wrong about the 2016 election results. There seems to be something of mandala effect going on where people have collectively forgotten that while yes, the pollsters initially favoured Hilary to win by the last final few days of the election it became much closer. RealClearPolitics keeps an archive of the polling results in the run up during the last few days of the 2016 election and if you take the time to look at the numbers you can clearly see that most pollsters were actually only a few points off a final figure for the popular vote with 46% to Trump and 48% to Clinton, its not surprising perhaps with these polling numbers to also not he also failed to win the popular vote during the election, the lowest margin of any POTUS, ever. (Link).

With that in mind, looking at the polling data one has to conclude that it would be wrong to argue that Trump is regarding as a popular president because during his first year he was actually the least popular president in recent American history and this trend seems to be continuing. The point of this this I just emphasis is not to chastise anyone who supports Trump, it is merely to highlight that they are in the minority with their support of Trump. Trump is not a popular President.

a reply to: OtherSideOfTheCoin

Meh.

I still like him even though I've disagreed with some things he's done.

Don't care what others think.

My opinion isn't a Facebook-thing where I have to check and see who else likes him first.

a reply to: OtherSideOfTheCoin

Definitely don't care how unpopular he is with foreign nations.

Only care about results.... we know he isn't an ideal role model President and can be quite embarrassing but he was hired for results!

So far, results have been quite impressive.

a reply to: OtherSideOfTheCoin

This is hilarious, you just keep on thinking everyone hates him, right on through two terms.


Jaden

Who cares if he’s not popular... he’s getting the job done that he promised.

A lot more than I can say for previous “popular” presidents !!

No president is popular. Rarely does any pres have over 50% support in polls out side of war time.

a reply to: OtherSideOfTheCoin

My guess is popular enough to get four more years.

The only way to know how popular he is is the vote.

he won so was pretty popular even though all the polls said what again?

he will win again in 2020 even though all these polls say he blows lol.

So when he wins again will you say he is popular?

a reply to: OtherSideOfTheCoin

Well there's the heavily indoctrinated "Voting Class", about 20% of the population, and 90% of them are hardcore ideologues (i.e. whatever the news networks say they should love/HATE that's "their" bag baby). And half of them (about 50.383683493838937% of them) well they all HATE Trump. The other half LOVE him. And everybody else too caught up in American Idol, or the NFL, to care abut much. Naturally some might loathe their ignorance, but realistically, they're ahead of the curve (shh thats supposed to be a secret).

When you can't openly support a man without being attacked, a certain percentage of people tend to shy away from showing support. We will just have to wait until 2020's election to find out how large that silent majority is.

Seems to be losing popularity in MI at a steady clip. Support signs & bumper stickers are on a steady decline lately. As far as my neighbors are concerned, it has more to do with his tariffs kicking manufacturing here in the nards than it does with what opponents think of their support -- they're NOT happy & consider him an economic threat.

originally posted by: infolurker
a reply to: OtherSideOfTheCoin
Only care about results.... we know he isn't an ideal role model President and can be quite embarrassing but he was hired for results!

So far, results have been quite impressive.

Sometimes embarrassing behavior overrules results. I wouldn't put Rosie O'Donnell or even a Kardashian in the WH, no matter how effective they may be.

The fact that he is so "unpopular" among the mainstream masses, is one of the reason why I support him.

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but popular opinion is usually reserved for the sheep.

Also, the fact that he consumes practically 100% of the airwaves, 24/7 of the time, and lIves in the head space of almost everyone rent-free, I'd say he is in fact quite popular.

a reply to: OtherSideOfTheCoin

George W Bush is president, the media rails against him daily, 24/7 and his poll numbers go down.

Obama is president, the media loves him, promotes him and attacks his critics on a daily, 24/7 basis. His numbers are good

Trump is president, the media ups the nightly anti-Trump drum beat, actively incites violence and lies on a daily basis with the agenda of undoing a democratic election.

I'm amazed his poll numbers aren't lower. I think that says something about the creditably of the "free press".

originally posted by: notsure1
The only way to know how popular he is is the vote.

Epic Freudian slip.

Edit: Dammit, wasn't fast enough, you fixed that E before I could post.

a reply to: OtherSideOfTheCoin

...and Congress' popularity rating has sat somewhere between 10% and 20% for well over a decade, while the same Congress critters keep getting re-elected.

Polls don't mean jack snip.

originally posted by: randomtangentsrme
No president is popular. Rarely does any pres have over 50% support in polls out side of war time.

Most presidents become less popular as time goes by.

However to say no president is popular is wrong, Obama started up at 60% and finished just over 50%, Bush senior was popular for much of his presidency, Clinton finished up as one of the highest rated POTUS's and Bush Jn managed to hit something crazy like 88% after 9/11 and keep his high approval ratings for the best part of two years.

When you look at the trends Trump is the least popular, thats kind of the point of this thread, not so much how other presidents were polling which is why I never bothered to really include much about them in the OP.

originally posted by: Middleoftheroad
When you can't openly support a man without being attacked, a certain percentage of people tend to shy away from showing support. We will just have to wait until 2020's election to find out how large that silent majority is.

Yep there are tons of people who say they dont like him just to appease their FB friends then when they get in that little booth they vote Trump.

Then they come out saying i dont know how that happened lol..

a reply to: notsure1

The only way to know how popular he is is the vote.

Did you read the OP.

He lost the popular vote by the biggest margin of any POTUS in history.

So even by your own measure he is a unpopular POTUS.

a reply to: Nyiah

This has nothing to so with my mother..

a reply to: OtherSideOfTheCoin

He got enough to win the presidency..

And he will get enough to win it again.

So pretty popular to me..