No, Donald Trump Does Not Have A '50 Percent Approval Rating' As He Tweeted, His Rating Is Still A Record Low

Donald Trump on Wednesday posted a Tweet in which he boasted of a ’50 percent approval rating,’ but that’s not quite the whole story.

On Wednesday, Donald Trump took to Twitter to boast about his claim of having achieved a “50 percent approval rating.” Trump, as the Inquisitr reported, took some backlash for posting the controversial Twitter message just a few hours after attending a state funeral for the 41st President of the United States, George H.W. Bush. The elder Bush died on November 30, at the age of 94.

But was Trump’s claim of a “50 percent approval rating” true? The answer is, only in the most limited sense. Out of numerous approval rating polls — at least 10 major polls have been released over the last 10 days — Trump selected the only one, the Rasmussen Reports daily tracking poll, to show his approval as high as 50 percent. In fact, an overall average of all polls shows Trump’s popularity at the lowest of any president since the first approval rating polls were conducted, which were conducted under President Harry Truman in 1945.

In addition, according to a Washington Post analysis of poling data, “Rasmussen sees results that are almost always much friendlier to Trump than other polls.”

In fact, comparing Rasmussen’s approval rating for Trump to an average of all polls compiled by Real Clear Politics, the daily Rasmussen poll has been higher than average almost every day — 99.4 percent of all days — since Trump’s January 20, 2017 inauguration.

The Real Clear Politics average as of Thursday puts Trump’s actual approval rating at just 43.3 percent — with a disapproval rating of 52.5 percent, leaving Trump with a “net” approval rating of -9.2.

The overall average Trump approval rating compiled by the data site FiveThirtyEight.com sees Trump with an even lower 42.1 percent approval rating, and a 52.3 disapproval, for a net rating of -10.2. But the FiveThirtyEight site also puts Trump’s approval rating in context, comparing Trump’s performance in the polling average to every past president since Truman.

The comparison shows that after 686 days in office, none of the previous 12 presidents for whom approval rating polls were taken were as unpopular as Trump. Compared to his immediate predecessor, President Barack Obama, Trump trails by 3.4 points. Compared to George H.W. Bush, whose funeral Trump attended on Wednesday, Trump trails by 17.7 points after 686 days.

Trump even trails Gerald R. Ford by 1.5 points, though Ford was a president who was never elected at all — becoming vice-president when Spiro T. Agnew resigned in disgrace and president when Richard M. Nixon resigned in disgrace — and who presided over an economy plagued by a suffocating inflation rate.

While Trump is correct that Wednesday’s daily Rasmussen poll showed his approval at 50 percent, by the following day, it had dropped back down to 49 percent. A YouGov poll released on Thursday showed Trump with a 41 percent approval rating.

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