As Goes Trump, So Goes the GOP

Donald Trump is historically unpopular. At the end of 2017, the three major polling aggregators—the HuffPost Pollster, Real Clear Politics, and FiveThirtyEight—put his approval rating at 40.4, 40, and 37.9 percent, respectively. According to FiveThirtyEight’s historical averages, this is the worst rating that any president has had at a comparable point since Gallup started asking the question in the late 1930s.

Trump had difficulties his entire first year. On almost every day since his inauguration, the president has had a lower approval rating than his predecessors. The notable exceptions are Gerald Ford and Bill Clinton. Ford’s numbers roughly matched Trump’s for a significant stretch of his first year and Clinton’s numbers briefly dipped below Trump levels in 1993. But those exceptions shouldn’t be comforting to the president. Ford wasn’t a picture of popularity—his numbers cratered after he pardoned Nixon—and Clinton’s overreach in his early policy initiatives is part of what led to the Republican wave of 1994.

It is pretty clear that voters didn’t like Trump in 2017.

Part of the problem was policy; most of the president’s major legislative pushes have been unpopular.

Republicans attempted to repeal and replace Obamacare multiple times last year, and they faced considerable pushback from the public. The American Health Care Act, which passed the House of Representatives in May, had the support of just 28.2 percent of respondents in an average of polls taken from March through May. (Polls were compiled by Chris Warshaw, a professor at George Washington University.) According to Warshaw’s averages, the House bill was less popular than Obama’s original 2009 Affordable Care Act and polled worse than Bill Clinton’s health-care plan, which ultimately failed in 1993. The Senate’s Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017 also polled poorly—a June NPR poll found that only 17 percent of adults approved of it. And in September, a CBS poll showed that most Americans disapproved of Graham-Cassidy (another proposed Obamacare replacement), with only 20 percent approving.