President Donald Trump got a bit of recent good news in that, at least for the time being, the public appears to still be giving him a "honeymoon period" — a CBS poll showed him with favorable ratings, something he barely ever enjoyed in his first presidency.
But therein lies the catch, Philip Bump wrote for The Washington Post — the only modern presidency he polls above is his own previous one.
"Consider the results of data compiled last year, evaluating each chief executive up to President Joe Biden among two groups," wrote Bump. "YouGov measures the popularity of past presidents among all Americans. And a pair of professors conducts a survey asking members of the American Political Science Association to evaluate presidential 'greatness.'"
The result for Trump is that "No president has a larger gap between his rankings by the public and by the experts. He’s 20th on the public’s list (one place behind Biden) and 45th on the scholars’."
The reason for this is clear, wrote Bump: he was in a "weird liminal space" of simultaneously being a former president and a candidate to be a newly-elected one, combined with a new era of hyper-polarization where presidents hardly ever get negative reviews from voters in their own party.
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But under the hood, Bump continued, there are danger signs for Trump.
"The average for Trump’s first term and Biden’s was under 50 percent, thanks to Trump. Trump’s second term has started a bit better — but his approval rating average at this point is still below everyone except himself, eight years ago," he wrote. And despite the 53 percent approval he got from the CBS poll, "His average is still below 50 percent ... and that 53 percent is lower than Biden’s average approval rating at the same point in 2021."
Meanwhile, YouGov found that while Trump enjoyed a jump in favorability after the election, it's "already starting to tick downwards" as the chaos of his new administration dominates the headlines and some of his own voters start to have second thoughts.
"A president who wants to assume the mantle of speaking for the people ... must necessarily insist that the people agree with his actions. So a poll showing 53 percent approval becomes a hallmark of popularity," Bump concluded. "Ranked against past presidents not named Trump, though, quite the opposite conclusion must be drawn."