Trump’s Job Approval Has Gone Both Up and Down

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I’ve put up this chart before, but it’s worth putting up again. This is President Trump’s job approval rating since Inauguration Day:

I’ve read a bunch of stories saying that Trump’s job approval has cratered since he took office, but that’s not really true: it’s gone up two points. Now, it’s also true that his disapproval rating has skyrocketed, which means that his net approval rating (approve minus disapprove) has gone down (from +3 to -6.4).

My take is simple: this means that his fans like him more than ever, while everyone else dislikes him more than ever. Perhaps this level of polarization is normal these days. But it’s a little more complicated than “Trump’s job approval has gone down.”

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DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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