President Donald Trump

By Glynn Wilson –

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Many members of the public and some politicians may not like public opinion polls, especially after what happened in the presidential election of 2016. But they are still the best snap shots of data we have to go by on how the public is thinking at any given moment in time.

As I indicated to my followers on Facebook just the other day when I ran the story showing that 55 percent of the American public now supports the House impeachment inquiry, there would soon be a new Gallup poll out on President Donald Trump’s job approval.

News Polls: A Majority of Americans Support Trump Impeachment Investigation

Well, it just came out, and Gallup updated a question occasionally used with other presidents between 1999 and 2003, which asked respondents for their views of the president personally, separate from their views of his job performance. The question was initiated during the presidency of Bill Clinton as he presided over a strong economy but, like Trump, was embroiled in scandal.

This poll is worth taking a close look at for what it reveals. According to the latest Gallup poll, Trump’s job approval as president has fallen from 43 percent to 40 percent. He’s been hovering in the mid-40s for months, mainly since the official numbers have been showing the economy humming right along in pretty good shape.

As a public opinion analyst and a trained academic social scientist in survey research, as well as a journalist who has been covering public opinion for many years, I was sort of expecting a drop below 40 percent since the news of the impeachment inquiry had penetrated the entire media landscape and it would be hard for anyone not to know about it. As I proved as a researcher more than 20 years ago, what is being covered in the news and how it is framed matters and can influence public opinion.

As the news keeps dripping out about Trump’s attempts to cover-up the news about his dealings with the president of Ukraine, and he keeps saying dangerous things about the Democrats in the House investigating him, journalists covering the news about him, immigrants and others, his numbers are likely to keep dropping.

But what is most interesting in this latest survey is not the job approval number, but Trump’s personal approval number, which has now dropped to 34 percent. And according to Gallup, his personal approval is down with Republicans and regular church goers, which shows that Trump’s behavior is finally starting to turn off his Christian Right base.

“Trump’s personal ratings are sharply lower than his performance ratings among two groups that are key to his base: Republicans and regular churchgoers — with less than half of the latter group approving of Trump as a person,” Gallup writes in its analysis of the numbers.

This could very well be significant, both in terms of his chances of being reelected, or even impeached.

If Republicans in Congress and especially the Senate see Trump losing support among party faithful and church goers, they might be more willing to openly criticize the president or even vote to impeach him, or at least go along with an impeachment investigation.

“The largest gaps in Trump’s job and personal approval ratings are among Republicans and weekly churchgoers — both with double-digit gaps,” Gallup says.

Of course the vast majority of Democrats do not like Trump personally or approve of the job he is doing, with only 6 percent who give him a positive personal approval and only 5 percent who approve of the job he is doing. Trump is even more divisive in this regard than either Bill Clinton or George W. Bush.

Trump’s latest ratings are from a September 16-30 Gallup poll, “which spanned an unfolding saga regarding the president’s reported attempts to solicit help investigating a potential election rival from foreign leaders,” Gallup says.

Among most groups, approval of Trump’s job performance is higher than approval of him as a person.

Trump’s 34 percent personal approval rating is similar to scores Clinton received toward the end of his presidency, but much lower than those given to President George W. Bush in his early years in the White House, Gallup shows.

The six percentage-point gap between Trump’s personal and job approval ratings nationally is narrower than Gallup recorded for Clinton and Bush during their presidencies.

“However, unlike Trump, Clinton was much more popular as a president than he was as a person while the opposite was true for Bush,” Gallup says.

People seemed to like Bush as the kind of guy you might want to have a beer with, but didn’t think so much of his intelligence or ability to govern. His war in Iraq was very unpopular, and his approval numbers dropped into the 20s when news of the Great Recession came out in 2008.

With less than a year and a half left in office, roughly one in three Americans approved of Clinton personally. But his job performance ratings were much higher, by between 21 and 32 percentage points.

“It’s likely that Clinton’s image had been dinged by his own actions — which came to light in the Monica Lewinsky scandal and the subsequent investigations,” Gallup says. “But with a booming U.S. economy, many Americans were willing to set aside reservations they had about him personally.”

Though Clinton’s and Trump’s personal ratings are similar, all political party groups made distinctions between Clinton’s performance and him as a person at the time — “whereas Democrats currently make no such distinctions for Trump,” Gallup says. “Additionally, Trump’s personal image among Republicans is currently much more positive than was the case for Clinton in the eyes of Democrats.”

Bush, on the other hand, received greater personal approval ratings than he received for his job performance. Bush enjoyed majority job approval in nearly all polls from 2001 to 2003, but Americans were even more likely to approve of him as a person. Bush’s personal approval ratings came in at more than double his disapprovals.

Gallup’s Bottom Line

“Ratings of Trump as a person are similar to those of Clinton in the final 16 months of his presidency, during a period when Clinton’s personal behavior was being heavily criticized by both parties. But there was much more daylight between the personal and job performance ratings of Clinton, who had recently endured an impeachment himself at the time, than is currently the case for Trump,” Gallup says.

“Clinton’s and Bush’s respective ratings illustrate that Americans view presidents’ performance differently than they view them as people, but that distinction might be lessened in the highly polarized political environment Trump governs in,” Gallup speculates. “It is also possible that Democrats’ views of Trump are specific to him, seeing him as a president for whom the line between his personal and work behavior may be more blurred.”

Or maybe the Democrats are more than willing to turn against one of their own members if the press reveals information that a politician is either personally or professionally corrupt, while modern Republicans care more about winning than personal or professional corruption.

In any event, Trump won’t like the comparisons either to Clinton or Bush. He views himself as superior to both. One reason Trump has been reluctant to go to war is he saw how unpopular Bush became after his war in Iraq.

But in the end, the American people will be the judge of that. You can’t bully people into liking you. Ask Richard Nixon.