On February 19th, The Marist Poll released the results of their poll concerning President Donald Trump’s approval ratings. The data suggests that in February 2020, 51% of adults in American disapprove of the job that their current president is doing, while just 42% of Americans approve, and 7% are unsure.
The easy headline here is that “Americans disapprove of President Trump,” because that’s an intriguing story, and it’s what– at the surface– the data says. Obviously, the reason a headline like this stands out is because it would stand to reason that if a majority of Americans disapprove of the current President, he won’t be re-elected, and that’s something that would grab people’s attention. But upon a further look at demographics though, you’ll find that it’s not true.
As most are aware, the United States Presidential Election is decided by the electoral college, not by the popular vote, which means that just because a majority of people don’t want to see Trump back in office in 2020, that doesn’t mean he won’t be. So while Trump’s approval rating is sitting at 42% last month, it doesn’t tell the whole story.
In fact, it’s quite misleading. According to The Marist Poll, Trump’s February 2020 approval rating is the highest it’s been in any February since he was elected.
In February 2017 President Trump had just a 39% approval rating, in February 2018 he had a 38% approval rating, in February 2019 it rose to 41%, and then– as aforementioned– this February it rose to 42%. According to the Gallup Poll, Trump has the lowest average approval rating of any President since the poll started keeping track of approval ratings in 1937.
Low approval ratings for Donald Trump is nothing new. Trump’s campaign has seen some ghastly approval ratings over the last four years, and it went as low as 35% in August, 2017. Yet, in 2020, an election year, Trump’s approval rating is beginning to rise, which is something the Democratic party has to be disheartened to see.
The fact that Trump has low approval ratings doesn’t mean he can’t win the election though. In fact, even when Trump first won the Presidency, his approval rating was quite low. After his second month in office (February 2017) he had an approval of just 39%. Approval rating is not usually a good indicator about who will win the election, like one would think.
In a recent study, NPR found that thanks to the electoral college, a Presidential candidate can win the election by garnering just 23% of the popular vote. Trump won the 2016 election by receiving 46% of the popular vote, 2% less than runner-up Hillary Clinton. Only 55.7% of Americans voted in that election, proving that it can be difficult to trust approval ratings, if only half of eligible Americans actually turn up to vote, as the Americans that weigh in on approval rating might not be the ones that vote.
If Trump had 46% of the popular vote (basically a 46% approval rate) and won, and he has 42% right now, that means this coming election will really be decided by the 7% of people who said they were undecided in February.
Link to the Poll: http://maristpoll.marist.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Wednesday-Release_NPR_PBS-NewsHour_Marist-Poll_USA-NOS-and-Tables_2002171446.pdf#page=3
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