A recent Gallup Poll shows President Donald Trump’s approval ratings continue to slip after the November election. Americans’ satisfaction with the direction of the country and approval of Congress are also trending down.
Right before the election, a Gallup Poll on job approval showed 45% approved of President Trump. Then, a poll taken in the two weeks immediately following the November presidential election, showed Trump with a 42% job approval rating.
That number has now slipped to 39%, according to the latest Gallup Poll taken during the first two weeks of December. The president’s approval rating has stayed between 35-49% over the course of his presidency.
The highest favorability rating President Trump has received during his presidency was 49% in April as the country was in the initial stages of the coronavirus pandemic.
As for how participants are feeling about Congress, in November, the Gallup Poll showed 23% had a favorable view of how Congress was doing. That number dropped to 15% in December. Notably, the poll was taken before a large coronavirus relief package and government spending bill passed both houses of Congress.
The lowest Gallup has recorded for job approval of Congress was 9% in November 2013.
There was a similar drop in how survey participants feel about the direction of the U.S., with 28% feeling satisfied in the direction of the country in October, then only 21% feeling satisfied in November, and 16% satisfied in December. The lowest level of satisfaction in the direction of the country this year was in July, when it was only 13%.
“This overall decline is driven primarily by Republicans, whose satisfaction fell from 60% in Gallup's final preelection measure in October to 22% in the most recent poll, likely a reaction to the election outcome,” the Gallup Poll analysis states.
Meanwhile, Gallup Poll’s surveys show approval ratings are ticking upward for President-elect Joe Biden. He had a 48% approval before the election, then 55% job approval rating in the weeks after the election. In the December poll, his job approval rating during the transition went up to 65%.
Gallup says Biden’s bump in favorability is in linewith trends they have seen after presidential elections since 2000.
Meanwhile, ratings for losing presidential candidates in Gallup’s poll have been mixed over the years; John McCain and Mitt Romney saw a higher rating post-election, and Hillary Clinton’s rating was unchanged after the 2016 election.
