A House Divided

What are Americans to make of the latest polls from Gallup, which finds that President Trump’s approval is at a historic low?

Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
President Trump during a news conference at the White House, January 21, 2025. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Talk about a House Divided. Feature the partisan breakdown in the new Gallup polling on President Trump’s second-term approval rating. The 47th president has the approval of 91 percent of Republicans. Among Independents 46 percent approve. Among Democrats the approval rating is but 6 percent. In all, Mr. Trump’s approval rating of 47 percent is a historic low, exceeded only by Mr. Trump himself, in his first term, with 44 percent.

Mr. Trump’s numbers place “him below all other elected presidents dating back to 1953,” says a senior editor at Gallup, Megan Brenan. What a contrast with, say, JFK, who in 1961 had a 72 percent approval rating in the first month of his presidency, per Gallup. Presidents Eisenhower and Obama both earned 68 percent approval ratings in their first months, and President Carter scored 66 percent. That didn’t guarantee their presidencies ended well.

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