Fact check: Trump’s false claims about his poll numbers
By Daniel Dale, CNN
When President Donald Trump was asked Tuesday about the subject of a run for a third term in the White House, which is prohibited by the Constitution, he said that “if you read it, it’s pretty clear I’m not allowed to run.” That’s true. But Trump also said two things about his popularity that are not even close to true.
He said, “I have my highest poll numbers that I’ve ever had.” And he said, “I have the best numbers for any president in many years – any president.”
Trump’s approval is down markedly from his second-term peak
In reality, polls show that Americans’ approval of Trump has declined significantly since the beginning of his second term in late January. Multiple polling averages confirm that Trump’s poll numbers are nowhere in the ballpark of their highest-ever levels.
A New York Times average put Trump’s net approval at negative-11 points as of Tuesday: 43% approval and 54% disapproval. That is down a net 20 points from the first week of the term, when Trump was at positive-9 points – 52% approval and 43% disapproval. CNN’s Poll of Polls average, updated Wednesday, has Trump’s net approval at negative-15 points (41% approval and 56% disapproval), down a net 14 points from our first average of the term in early February.
Other polling averages also show large drops in Trump’s standing since the beginning of the term.
An average produced by G. Elliott Morris, co-founder of the polling data website FiftyPlusOne.news, put Trump’s net approval at roughly negative-14 points as of Tuesday, down about a net 26 points from the first days of the term. An average produced by data journalist Nate Silver put Trump’s net approval at roughly negative-10 points as of Tuesday, down about a net 22 points from the first days of the term.
The White House didn’t respond to a CNN request for comment for this article.
It’s worth noting that Trump does continue to have extremely high approval among Republicans, often in the vicinity of 90%. But he never said Tuesday that he was talking about his popularity with his own party rather than the country as a whole, and he is not at a personal record high even among Republicans in particular.
Many other presidents had far better numbers
Trump’s current poll numbers are nowhere close to “the best numbers for any president in many years,” even if you ignore the fact that they’re not even his own best numbers in many years.
Trump’s current low standing – a negative net approval, with approval specifically in the low-40s – clearly does not approach the approval peaks of recent predecessors. President Barack Obama hit 69% approval in the early days of his first term, according to tracking by polling firm Gallup, while President George W. Bush hit 90% approval in the wake of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. Even President Joe Biden, who struggled with weak poll numbers for much of his term, was up at 57% approval in both January 2021 and April 2021.
Trump’s claim is also wrong even if he was referring specifically to other presidents’ poll numbers on the same date of a term.
Biden had low net approval on the equivalent day of his term, but it was still better than Trump’s in both Morris’s average and Silver’s average. And Trump’s boast about beating “any president in many years” clearly suggested he was comparing himself to other presidents in addition to Biden; the data shows that every other person elected president after World War II had better poll numbers than Trump on the equivalent date in their first term, in both net approval and approval alone.
Silver’s historical tracking shows that, on the date Trump made this claim while having a roughly negative-10 net approval, Obama had about a positive-9 net approval in his first term, George W. Bush about positive-76, President Bill Clinton positive-2, President George H.W. Bush about positive-38, President Ronald Reagan about positive-20, President Jimmy Carter about positive-24, President Richard Nixon about positive-27, President John F. Kennedy about positive-65, President Dwight D. Eisenhower about positive-45, and President Harry Truman about positive-41.
It would be fair to point out that Trump is serving a (non-consecutive) second term rather than a first term. But that added context doesn’t make Trump’s assertion correct. Gallup, which assessed presidential approval on a quarter-by-quarter basis, found that, other than Nixon, Trump had a lower average approval in his 19th quarter as president – the third quarter of the second term, running from July 20 through October 19 – than any president elected to two terms from at least Eisenhower in the 1950s onward.
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