A new poll released on Thursday has bad news for President Donald Trump as he completes the first week of his administration.
Presently 36 percent of American voters approve of his performance as president-elect/president while 44 percent disapprove of it, according to the Quinnipiac University survey. Nineteen percent remain undecided.
By contrast, former President Barack Obama had a 59 percent approval rating compared to only 25 percent who disapproved of him in the first Quinnipiac poll held after his inauguration — although that poll was not taken until March 4, 2009.
These numbers are consistent with other studies which have found that Obama is more popular than Trump — both right now and when he was at a comparable point in his administration — and that Trump is held in remarkably low regard for an incoming president. Usually a majority of Americans can be expected to support a new president when he or she is taking office, hence the term "honeymoon" period.
That said, Trump's numbers were not bad across-the-board. His ratings are overwhelmingly favorable among Republicans (81 percent to 3 percent) and he has slightly higher positive-than-negative ratings among men (41 percent to 38 percent), white voters (43 percent to 40 percent), and voters aged 50 to 64 (47 percent to 33 percent). Similarly, voters older than 65 are evenly split about him (41 percent to 41 percent).
On the other hand, while Trump's high disapproval rating among Democrats is to be expected (77 percent to 4 percent), he has ominously large negatives among many of the groups he will need to be reelected in 2020. These include independent voters (45 percent are negative compared to 35 percent positive), women (50 percent to 33 percent), non-white voters (55 percent to 20 percent), voters 18 to 34 years old (51 percent to 26 percent), and voters 35 to 49 years old (53 percent to 30 percent).
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