Trump's approval ratings drop as he vows to keep fighting election results

Since President-elect Joe Biden won the Nov. 3 election, Donald Trump has continued to fight the election’s results, even as his approval ratings among members of his own party have fallen by 6 full points.

The first Gallup survey taken after the election indicates that Trump’s overall rating among American adults has dropped from 45% to 42%, but his rating among Republicans, which sat at 95% in late October, has dropped to 89% in the wake of the election.

And, according to the poll, 60% of Republicans said they were “satisfied with the way things are going in the U.S.” prior to the election, but only 35% said the same during the period of the survey, from Nov. 5 to 19.

According to Gallup, every other loser of a presidential election since 2008 has enjoyed either a boost in popularity or ratings that remained largely the same. John McCain’s popularity increased by 14 points after the 2008 election.

The report goes on to note that Mitt Romney’s popularity increased after the 2012 election and Hillary Clinton’s remained more or less the same following her 2016 loss, making Trump’s ratings drop unparalleled in recent years.

According to a report published by Pew Research Center on Aug. 24, by the end of the summer, about 40% of Americans approved of the job Trump was doing in office.

“Although Trump experienced a slight bump in approval ratings at the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak – 45% of the public in March and 44% of the public in April said they approved of the way Trump was handling his job – his approval ratings have settled back to where they were before the pandemic hit the United States,” the report noted.

This means Trump’s approval ratings have in general dipped lower than those of any modern president besides George H.W. Bush in 1992. He is the first modern president never to surpass a 50% approval rating at any point during his time in office.

By contrast, Gallup finds that Biden’s approval rating, which currently sits at 55%, is the highest it’s ever been since he announced his presidential bid.

While the poll does not specify the reasons for Trump’s drop in popularity, a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in the three days following the media’s call that Biden had won the election, indicates that nearly 8 in 10 Americans accept that he did win, despite Trump’s continuing claims to the contrary.

And even prominent Republicans such as former President George W. Bush have acknowledged Biden’s win, while others, such as Bush’s former White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove and Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), have been openly critical of Trump’s failure to concede.

Some 30 members of Trump’s own senior staff shared with the Washington Post directly that Trump’s behavior has become increasingly erratic in the aftermath of the election, with one comparing the White House occupant to “Mad King George, muttering, ‘I won. I won. I won.'”

But Trump continues to claim without evidence that he won the election.

“NO WAY WE LOST THIS ELECTION!” Trump tweeted Sunday night.

He continued in the same vein Monday morning.

“I’m not fighting for me,” Trump wrote. “I’m fighting for the 74,000,000 million people (not including the many Trump ballots that were ‘tossed’), a record for a sitting President, who voted for me!”

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.