Is President Trump's approval rating on the rise?
Forty percent of registered voters approve of President Trump's job performance, while 55 percent disapprove, according to a survey released Wednesday by Quinnipiac University. Those numbers aren't exactly great news for the president – he's still fairly deep underwater – but they are the best results the president has seen in Quinnipiac's survey since June. And they also mirror other recent polls that showed a slight upswing in Mr. Trump's approval ratings.
An Economist/YouGov poll also released Wednesday, for example, showed the president's approval rating among registered voters at 45 percent, and his disapproval rating at 53 percent – a net approval of negative eight percent. In a December Economist survey, Mr. Trump's net approval rating stood at negative 14 percent.
(For comparison's sake, the latest CBS News survey, released last month, showed the president's approval rating among all Americans at 37 percent and his disapproval rating at 58 percent.)
In the aggregate, Mr. Trump's poll numbers have undergone a slow-but-steady climb since mid-December. The lowest point in the president's poll numbers, to date, came on December 13, when his approval rating stood at 37 percent, and his disapproval rating stood at 58.1 percent, according to the RealClearPolitics average of polls. That's a net approval rating of negative 21.1 percent.
Today, according to the same aggregator, Mr. Trump's average approval rating is 42.4 percent, and his average disapproval rating is 53.8 percent – a net negative of just 11.4 percent.
While it's difficult to peg an increase in the president's approval rating to any specific event, some news items over the last few months may have helped boost Mr. Trump. The State of the Union address, for example, historically provides presidents with an opportunity to set the narrative and frame their accomplishments before a massive primetime audience. Additionally, the president secured what was seen as his first big legislative accomplishment with the passage of the GOP tax bill in December.
Americans are also feeling very optimistic about the economy, which may be contributing to Mr. Trump's improving numbers. In the Quinnipiac survey, 70 percent of registered voters described the state of the economy as "excellent" or "good" -- the highest number since Quinnipiac began asking that question in 2001.
The Economist/YouGov poll surveyed 1,320 registered voters between February 4 and February 6, and it has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.8 percent. The Quinnipiac poll surveyed 1,333 registered voters between February 2 and February 5, and it has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.3 percent. The CBS News poll surveyed 1,225 Americans between January 13 and January 16, and it has a margin of error of plus or minus three percent.