Trump’s Job Approval Has Gone Both Up and Down

Test Ticker

Please support Mother Jones with a year-end donation. The truth is, we're a long way from our $600,000 goal, and we have to get as close as we can by Tuesday so we don't have to make hard decisions come January. If you value our reporting, please consider pitching in today.

$600,000

We still need to raise 400,000: Whether you can give $5 or $500, it all matters.

Please support Mother Jones with a year-end donation. We need to raise $600,000, or get as close as we can, by Tuesday so we don't need to make hard decisions come January. Whether you can give $5 or $500, it all makes a difference.

Let our journalists help you make sense of the noise: Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily newsletter and get a recap of news that matters.

I’ve put up this chart before, but it’s worth putting up again. This is President Trump’s job approval rating since Inauguration Day:

I’ve read a bunch of stories saying that Trump’s job approval has cratered since he took office, but that’s not really true: it’s gone up two points. Now, it’s also true that his disapproval rating has skyrocketed, which means that his net approval rating (approve minus disapprove) has gone down (from +3 to -6.4).

My take is simple: this means that his fans like him more than ever, while everyone else dislikes him more than ever. Perhaps this level of polarization is normal these days. But it’s a little more complicated than “Trump’s job approval has gone down.”