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WASHINGTON – Donald Trump is the only president in U.S. history to be impeached twice – this time for his role in instigating a deadly assault on Capitol Hill by his supporters – but he’s still on point to leave office with a fairly typical job approval rating of his time in office.
A new NBC News poll found 43% of voters nationwide gave Trump a positive job approval rating, barely down from the 45% who said the same before the November election and the 44% who approved his performance shortly after taking office in 2017..
The same poll found that 35% of voters – including 74% of Republicans but only 30% of Independents and 3% of Democrats – believe that President-elect Joe Biden did not legitimately win the 2020 election.
Sixty-one percent of all voters – but only 21 percent of Republicans – say Biden legitimately won.
While a record 10 House Republicans broke ranks to vote for the president’s impeachment last week, Trump’s approval rating among Republicans in the poll shows little sign that GOP voters are largely overwhelmed. disappointed with the president.
Almost 9 in 10 Republicans – 87% – approve of Trump, compared to 89% who said the same thing before the November election.
And even for the half of Republicans who say they prioritize the GOP in general over allegiance to Trump, its high endorsement remains unmoved by recent events.
Of those Republicans who say their primary loyalty is to Trump over the party, 98% approve of his performance. For those who say they prioritize the party over the president, his approval is still 81% – virtually unchanged from October 2020. (These results contrast with other recent national polls showing Trump’s job rating is lower. Unlike other surveys that sampled all American adults, the NBC poll surveyed registered voters.)
In the NBC survey, nearly a third of GOP voters polled – 28% – said Trump’s words and actions related to the violence on Capitol Hill on January 6 actually bolstered their vote for Trump.
Only 5% said they now regret their support for him, and two-thirds – 66% – said their feelings about Trump had not changed.
While 52% of voters overall say Trump is solely or primarily responsible for the protests that drove rioters to overtake Capitol Hill, including 91% of Democrats and 44% of Independents, only 11% of Republicans agree . (However, about half of Republicans blame “social media companies” and “Antifa”.)
“While a few Republican elected officials have broken with Trump, Republican voters are staying with him for now,” said Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research, who conducted the poll with Republican pollster Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies. “As we have seen during his tenure, a major event after a major event does little to shake Trump’s position with Republicans.”
Trump’s position among those outside the GOP also remains unchanged. It gets a positive job rating from 44% of independents and just 5% of Democrats in the latest poll, shares that are also almost identical to pre-election polls.
A previous NBC poll indeed found that Trump’s approval among voters was remarkably stable despite his tumultuous presidency, only fluctuating between a high of 47% and a low of 38%.
The latter note came in late 2017, after Trump was widely criticized for his response to violence after a rally of white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Half of voters call Trump “worse than most” presidents
About half of the electorate – 49% of voters – ranks Trump as “significantly worse than most” presidents, a share that has recently rivaled only the 48% who said the same about incumbent President George W Bush late 2008.
Another 9% say Trump is “not as good as most.”
Forty percent of voters rank Trump as “one of the best” presidents (19%) or “better than most” (21%). This is significantly lower than the majorities who gave above-average opinions for Bill Clinton (56%) or Barack Obama (55%) when they left office.
But Trump’s lukewarm scrutiny still doubles the just 20% of voters who gave Bush an above-average ranking when he left the White House in 2009.
The legacy of the outgoing president, like the views of his performance throughout his presidency, is defined by hard partisan lines.
Those who see Trump’s presidency as “better than most” or “one of the best” include 82% of Republicans, but only 40% of independents and just 4% of Democrats.
When former Presidents Obama and Clinton stepped down while enjoying relatively high approval ratings, a higher proportion of those in the opposing party – 20% and 27% of Republicans, respectively – ranked their presidencies au- above average.
Biden, Harris best Trump on the favorability scale
As the poll finds Trump’s personal favorability ratings underwater, Democrats heading to the White House are faring better.
President-elect Biden has a net favorability rating of +4 (44% positive, 40% negative), while Vice President-elect Kamala Harris has a net rating of +0 (41% positive, 41% negative).
This is compared to Trump’s personal net score of -13 (40% positive, 53% negative).
Joe Biden’s wife Jill Biden has a personal favorability rating of +14 (40 percent positive, 26 percent negative). Notably, however, a majority of Republicans – 59 percent – give it a negative rating, a particularly high marker of antipathy for a first lady coming from members of the opposing party.
Before Obama’s inauguration, 33% of Republicans gave Michelle Obama a negative personal rating. And before Trump’s inauguration, 44% of Democrats gave Melania Trump an equally low rating.
The NBC News poll of 1,000 registered voters was conducted January 10-13, 2021 by Republican firm Public Opinion Strategies and Democratic firm Hart Research. The margin of error for registered voters is +/- 3.1 percentage points.
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