U.S. President Donald Trump’s approval rating has reached an all-time low, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll.
The poll also found his six-month approval rating is the lowest of any president over the past 70 years.
Thirty-six per cent of Americans polled approved of the president’s performance, which is down from 42 per cent in April. Trump’s disapproval rating has risen five points to 58 per cent.
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Former president Gerald Ford was the last leader to be near that mark in the poll half-a-year into his presidency, with a 39 per cent approval rating in 1975. Former presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush were at 59 per cent at the six-month mark.
Overall, 48 per cent say they “disapprove strongly” of Trump’s performance in office.
The slip in approval stems largely from the Russian controversy, according to the poll. A majority of respondents said it was inappropriate for his son, Donald Trump Jr., to have met with a Russian lawyer during the 2016 election.
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Trump took to Twitter Sunday, saying the ABC/Washington Post poll had been “just about the most inaccurate” poll during the election last year. He added that his “almost 40 per cent” rating “is not bad at this time.”
Health-care plans
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On health care, 24 per cent of the respondents favoured the Republican plan to overhaul Obamacare. Seventeen percent “strongly” favour the GOP plan, which has yet to be explained in detail. Half of the respondents preferred Obamacare to the proposals to replace it.
Twitter usage
The poll shows two-thirds of Americans disapprove of Trump’s Twitter use.
Sixty-eight per cent find it inappropriate, 65 per cent call it insulting and 52 per cent think it’s dangerous.
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Professionalism
According to the poll, 27 per cent said since taking office, Trump has “acted in a way that’s fitting and proper for a president of the United States.” Seventy per cent said he’s has acted in a way that is “unpresidential.”
Impeachment?
A recent poll by Monmouth University found 41 per cent of the respondents supported impeaching Trump six months into his term. This is significantly higher than the number who called for Richard Nixon’s impeachment six months into that president’s second term.
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The poll asked the same question used during Nixon’s presidency. In July 1973 as the Watergate scandal started to unfold, just 24 per cent of the public supported impeachment and 62 per cent were opposed.
“Even though Trump’s approval rating is similar to Nixon’s, more Americans support impeachment today than did in 1973. That’s partly due to the current epidemic of hyper-partisanship that was simply not prevalent forty years ago,” Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute said.
The ABC News/Washington Post poll was conducted by landline and cellular telephone July 10-13, 2017, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 1,001 adults. Results have a margin of sampling error of 3.5 points, including the design effect. Partisan divisions are 35-23-35 percent, Democrats-Republicans-independents. The survey was produced for ABC News by Langer Research Associates of New York, New York, with sampling, data collection and tabulation by Abt Associates of Cambridge, Massachusetts. See details on the survey’s methodology here.
The Monmouth University Poll was sponsored and conducted by the Monmouth University Polling Institute from July 13 to 16, 2017 with a national random sample of 800 adults age 18 and older, in English. This includes 400 contacted by a live interviewer on a landline telephone and 400 contacted by a live interviewer on a cell phone. ). The error attributable to sampling has a maximum margin of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
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