Gallup Has Stopped Tracking Presidential Approval Ratings

Gallup is putting away one of its oldest political yardsticks. The polling firm says that as part of "an evolution in how Gallup focuses its public research and thought leadership," it will no longer track job-approval and favorability numbers for presidents and other individual politicians, the Hill reports. Company founder George Gallup started asking about presidential job approval in the 1930s, and by the start of Harry Truman's presidency, it "had become a routine measure that Gallup and other firms have used ever since," Gallup researcher Frank Newport noted in a 2021 look at the history of the question. Newport said it was "probably the most frequently used public opinion measure in history."

In Gallup's December poll, President Trump had an approval rating of 36%, the lowest of his second term. The lowest of his first term was 34% in January 2021. Historically, Gallup data has helped define the reputations of presidents: Harry Truman averaged 45% approval, Joe Biden 42%, Dwight Eisenhower 61%, and John F. Kennedy an eye-catching 71%. Historical Gallup figures show Trump had the lowest first-term average approval rating of any postwar president, at 41.1%. He's also the only president never to have scored an approval rating above 50%, but several presidents have had much lower lows than Trump, including George W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon, and Truman, whose approval rating fell to just 22% in February 1952. His highest was 87% in June 1945.

Trump has often raged against poll numbers he doesn't like. "Fake and Fraudulent Polling should be, virtually, a criminal offense," he said in a Truth Social post after a New York Times poll last month. Asked by the Hill and Axios if pressure from the White House influenced the decision, Gallup said the move "is a strategic shift solely based on Gallup's research goals and priorities." The company said approval ratings are now "widely produced, aggregated and interpreted, and no longer represent an area where Gallup can make its most distinctive contribution."