Context for popularity comparisons

Hmm. President Trump is up to 46% in approval rating. He has been floating between 40 and 45 for much of his presidency. The new data is interesting but not enough to recognize as a trend line.

But reading that 46%, it occurred to me that, as usual, it lacks context. How is he compared to Obama at the same point? How is he compared to other OECD leaders? How about compared to other recent American presidents at this same point in their administration? And how does that popularity compare the the average press treatment?

Multiple challenges. Time frames for one. Different methodologies or wording is another. Foreign leaders are at different stages in their terms for a third. But very roughly, here is what I found.

President Trump - 46%

Other presidents

Average of post-Carter presidents - 50%

President Obama at the same stage - 46%

President George Bush - 63%

President Clinton - 41%

President George H.W. Bush - 61%

President Ronal Reagan - 41%


Other foreign leaders

Prime Minister of Italy - 67%

Prime Minister of Germany - 50%

Prime Minister of Canada - 42%

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (cabinet) - 34%

Prime Minister of England - 29%

President of France - 23%


Other American Political Figures

Paul Ryan - 40%

Hillary Clinton - 36%

Chuck Schumer - 29%

Nancy Pelosi - 29%

Mitch McConnell - 24%

It is interesting to contrast Trumps numbers with those of the various other world leaders of democracies. He is held in higher regard by his citizens than all other contemporary American political figures. He is more popular than Reagan and Clinton were at this same point in their presidencies and at the same level of popularity as Obama.

He is significantly more popular than most European leaders with their respective electorates, exceeding all but those from Italy and Germany.

If he is this popular compared to all others, where do we get the impression that he is uniquely bad, incompetent and evil?

Probably has to do much less with what voters think and more to do with what the press thinks. From Economic Boom Largely Ignored as TV's Trump Coverage Hits 92% Negative.

In four weeks, Americans go to the polls for the midterm elections that the news media are casting as a referendum on the Trump presidency. Over the summer, the broadcast networks have continued to pound Donald Trump and his team with the most hostile coverage of a President in TV news history — 92 percent negative, vs. just eight percent positive.

For this report, MRC analysts reviewed all 1,007 evening news stories (1,960 minutes of airtime) about the Trump administration on ABC, CBS and NBC from June 1 to September 30, tallying the coverage of each topic and all evaluative comments made by anchors, reporters and non-partisan sources (such as voters or experts).

The results show that, over the past four months, nearly two-thirds of evening news coverage of the Trump presidency has been focused on just five main topics: the Russia investigation; immigration policy; the Kavanaugh nomination; North Korea diplomacy; and U.S. relations with Russia. The networks’ coverage of all of these topics has been highly negative, while bright spots for the administration such as the booming economy received extremely little coverage (less than one percent of the four-month total).

I recognize all the measurement issues entailed and am not making an argument that Trump's measures should be higher or lower.

It is just striking how bad a perception the press is transmitting of Trump and how bad they make him out to be and yet how relatively popular he is compared to nearly all his peers and other senior political leaders.

It also makes you wonder what his popularity rating might be were the press to be playing a straight bat.