As many as 55 percent of Americans have a negative view of their President-elect Donald Trump, leaving him a historically low favorability rating before the inauguration in comparison with his three immediate predecessors received when they were presidents-elect, a new poll shows Monday.
Only 40 percent had a favorable view of Trump compared to President Obama, who enjoyed a 78 percent rating ahead of his inauguration. George W. Bush meanwhile held a 62 percent favorability rating and Bill Clinton a 66 percent rating, according to the latest Gallup poll results.
Among the four, Trump is the only president-elect whose unfavorable rating outweighs his favorable score. Only 18 percent of Americans hold a negative view of Obama before his inauguration, compared with 26 percent for Clinton and 36 percent for Bush.
Gallup said it has asked favorable and unfavorable ratings for key figures in this format since 1992, so only comparisons to Clinton, Bush and Obama are available.
Following his victory of the Nov. 8 general election, Trump's favorable rating increased and has remain slightly higher than during the campaign, when it never rose above 38 percent. However, the previous presidents-elect also saw improvement in their images after winning the election. Obama's favorable image raised 16 percentage points, Clinton's rose 15 points and Bush's seven points between Gallup's final pre-election poll and its last pre-inauguration poll.
Among Republican respondents, 82 percent hold a favorable opinion of Trump, though the figure is lower than favorable ratings prior presidents have enjoyed among members of their own party in their ascension to the White House.
Bush had nearly unanimous favorability from fellow Republicans in January 2001, with 97 percent of GOP respondents rating him favorably at that time. Obama (95 percent) and Clinton (92 percent) enjoyed favorable opinions from more than nine in 10 Democrats.
Trump will enter the White House with his party's majority in both chambers of Congress, but his general unpopularity is an unprecedented hurdle, whose impact on his ability to govern remains to be seen, says Justin McCarthy, a Gallup analyst.
Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted bewteen Jan. 4 and 8 with a random sample of 1,032 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. The margin of sampling error is 4 percentage points.
