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Trump Was Never Very Popular, But How Will Americans View Him (And Biden) Now?

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trump-was-never-very-popular-but-how-will-americans-view-him-and-biden-now/

DEC. 4, 2020, AT 7:00 AM

By Nathaniel Rakich

1204_POLLA-4×3
Welcome to Pollapalooza, our (mostly1) weekly polling roundup.

Poll(s) of the week

On a very basic level, one big reason why President Trump lost reelection is that he wasn’t very popular. As of Nov. 3, his job approval rating was just 44.6 percent, and his disapproval rating was 52.6 percent, according to FiveThirtyEight’s presidential approval average.

That -8.1-point2 net approval rating was the third-lowest of any recent3 president on the day they stood for election to a second term. (Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush were the only two other presidents to go into Election Day with a lower net approval rating, or higher disapproval rating, than Trump’s.) Notably, all three lost.

Unpopular presidents usually lose elections

Recent presidents’ average approval and disapproval ratings on Election Day of the year they ran for another term

PRESIDENT YEAR WON ELECTION? APPROVAL DISAPPROVAL NET

Lyndon B. Johnson* 1964 ? 74.0% 15.0% +59.0
Dwight D. Eisenhower 1956 ? 67.9 19.1 +48.8
Richard Nixon 1972 ? 61.3 28.6 +32.7
Ronald Reagan 1984 ? 57.9 33.0 +24.9
Bill Clinton 1996 ? 54.6 38.6 +16.0
Barack Obama 2012 ? 49.5 47.1 +2.4
Gerald Ford* 1976 43.6 41.3 +2.3
George W. Bush 2004 ? 48.4 47.5 +0.9
Harry S. Truman* 1948 ? 39.6 45.5 -5.9
Donald Trump 2020 44.6 52.6 -8.1
Jimmy Carter 1980 37.9 54.8 -16.9
George H.W. Bush 1992 32.6 55.5 -22.9
*Acceded to the presidency mid-term.

SOURCE: POLLS

Part of this boils down to the well-documented relationship between a president’s approval rating and his ability to win another election. Hugely popular presidents like Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan cruised to a second term, while divisive but still net-popular ones like George W. Bush and Barack Obama won in squeakers. In fact, the only recent president to lose his bid for a second term with a positive net approval rating was Gerald Ford in 1976.

(That said, he had a fairly weak approval rating — just 43.6 percent, lower than Trump’s on Election Day in 2020. A relatively high share of Americans had no opinion of him, which may have made it easier for his opponent, Carter, to win them over.)

That means the only president with a negative net approval rating to win a second term was Harry S. Truman in 1948 — an election still upheld as one of the most shocking upsets of all time.

That said, a president’s approval rating is hardly the last word. Elections, after all, are a choice between (at least) two candidates. But in the case of 2020, it looks like President-elect Biden was indeed more popular than Trump, at least according to Biden’s favorability ratings. (Favorability ratings and approval ratings aren’t quite the same thing, but they are pretty close.)

And according to an average of favorability polls conducted during the week before Election Day, Biden had a 51.0 percent favorability rating and a 43.9 percent unfavourability rating, for a net favorability rating of +7.0 points. Meanwhile, Trump’s average net favorability rating in those same polls4 (-10.8 points, or 43.1 percent favorable vs. 53.9 percent unfavorable) was slightly worse than his net approval rating.