Trumped: Disapproval Outweighed Approval During the Entire Presidency of Donald J. Trump…But…Is that really surprising?
A look at the ratings of President Donald J. Trump, and why the real story is how they remained fairly constant throughout his term.
Love him or hate him, President Donald Trump sparked an enthusiasm for politics not observed in the United States for quite some time. Those who hated him, really hated him. And, those who loved him, really loved him.
Rarely did his presidency experience indifferent or muted attitudes but rather sparked polarization on whichever side of the coin one found themselves on.
Since the dawn of his presidency, RealClearPolitics has been compiling regular approval and disapproval ratings garnered from various, major polling organization to include, but not limited to, Quinnipiac, Reuters, and Gallop. These and a myriad of other pollsters have been querying Americans’ attitudes on President Trump, almost daily, from 2017 through 2021. The amount of data garnered is exhaustive to say the least, so in order to amply convey this information visually, the data sets were averaged in longer time intervals to make them more digestible. The corresponding graph illustrates the percentages of approval and disapproval for President Trump based on four time periods in each year of his presidency.
What’s glaring in this representation is that President Trump’s approval and disapproval ratings, throughout his tenure, remained fairly constant. Sure, there are some sharp dips throughout his time of in office, in both respects, but these are mild at best and readily rebounded to their normal levels. In other presidencies, even those that were equally provocative, sharp changes in these rating were profound. For instance, at the end of President Nixon’s time in office his approval rating nose-dived to around twenty percent. Moreover, President Bill Clinton, who mostly enjoys a universally favorable view of his time in office, experienced extremes in his approval ratings during his stint. Granted, both President Nixon and Clinton had terms marred by controversy, but so did President Trump. Yet President Trump’s ratings remain stable and measured, why?
The real story here is the current state of affairs in American society. Tribalism, in its present form, is defined as behaviors that are steeped in one’s blind loyalty to a social group or movement. This means that whichever team you subscribe to will dictate your views and in turn, translate into poll numbers regardless of the conditions on the ground. In the Nixon and Clinton terms, poll numbers changed dramatically based on events that adversely impacted their presidencies, i.e., “Watergate” and Monica Lewinsky. In tribal America, events like these seem to have little impact on poll numbers. Controversial issues during Trump’s time in office (i.e., impeachment, “Russia-gate”) will not yield as great of an impact on poll numbers due to this new societal trend. As mentioned above, the haters hate and the lovers love, regardless of what is actually happening during the term. This explains the steady, unremarkable trends in Trump’s approval and disapproval polls and perhaps foreshadows the future of American politics in the coming decades.
