Trump job approval swings lower

After a brief rebound, President Trump’s job approval rating has swung lower in the latest Harvard–Harris Poll survey.

Forty-four percent say they approve of the job Trump is doing, a 4-point drop from June and below the previous low of 45 percent in May. 

At 83 percent, Republicans still overwhelmingly approve of the job Trump is doing, but only 40 percent of independents approve. Trump is at 54 percent approval among white voters, 32 percent among Latinos and 12 percent among black voters.

{mosads}The poll was taken before the collapse of Republicans’ latest effort to repeal ObamaCare in the Senate early Friday morning.

“There is an extreme racial divide on Trump approval as a majority of white voters approve of the job he has done while almost 9 in 10 blacks disapprove,” said Harvard–Harris Poll co-director Mark Penn.

Voters approve of the job Trump is doing on fighting terrorism, jobs and the economy, but disapprove of his handling of immigration, foreign affairs and administering the government.

Only 41 percent have a favorable view of the president personally, the survey found.

The same number say the presidency is on the right track, against 59 percent who say it is on the wrong track. 

Among those who believe the presidency is headed in the right direction, most say it is because of the president’s policies, not because of his temperance for the job. For those who believe Trump is on the wrong track, 77 percent said it was because he is intemperate.

“People who support the president support his policies; people who think the administration is on the wrong track dislike his personal style and want him to tone it down,” said Penn.

Voters say that Trump could improve his presidency by focusing more on the economy, by abstaining from Twitter, by changing his tone to be less combative or by reshuffling his White House team to install people with more government experience.

Republicans in Congress are less popular than Trump and are performing worse than Democrats. While 59 percent give Democrats in Congress a negative rating, 67 percent disapprove of the job Republicans are doing.

“The division in the administration has hurt the president while the division in the Republican Party has hurt the Republicans,” Penn said. “They have created their own version of gridlock. But Democrats are far from majority support as well as the country favors bipartisan action.”

Only 32 percent of voters say the country is on the right track. But there is still optimism about the economy, with 44 percent saying it’s on the right track compared to 41 percent who said wrong track.

“It’s rare for voters to see the economy on the right track but the administration so much on the wrong track,” Penn said.

Trump continues to be hampered by his firing of former FBI Director James Comey and the myriad investigations and controversies pertaining to Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

Forty-four percent say there should be no action against Trump on these fronts, while 41 percent say Trump should be impeached and 15 percent say he should be censured by Congress. Still, a strong majority — 64 percent — say the investigations are hurting the country.

The public is split over the revelation that Donald Trump Jr. met with a Russian lawyer last year under the pretense he would get dirt on then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

Thirty-seven percent said a crime may have been committed. Thirty-three percent said it was a typical of political campaigns conducting opposition research and 30 percent said the meeting was inappropriate but not a crime.

“The Donald Trump Jr. revelations did not change any minds on impeachment — it’s still 4 in 10, including most Democrats,” Penn said.

The Harvard-Harris Poll online survey of 2,051 registered voters was conducted between July 19 and July 24. The partisan breakdown is 37 percent Democrat, 31 percent Republican, 27 percent independent and 4 percent other.



The Harvard-Harris Poll is a collaboration of the Harvard Center for American Political Studies and The Harris Poll. The Hill will be working with Harvard-Harris Poll throughout 2017. 

Full poll results will be posted online later this week.

 The Harvard-Harris Poll survey is an online sample drawn from the Harris Panel and weighted to reflect known demographics. As a representative online sample, it does not report a probability confidence interval.