Former President Donald Trump has one of the lowest approval ratings of recent former presidents, lagging behind several of his predecessors, according to a survey conducted by Gallup last month.
The survey asking Americans whether they approve of certain former presidents was published on Monday and showed that Trump had an approval rating of just 46 percent compared to a disapproval of 54 percent.
The figures come as Trump continues his campaign to win the 2024 Republican presidential nomination and potentially line up a rematch against President Joe Biden.
This is the first time Trump has been included in Gallup's survey about former presidents—the survey was last conducted in 2018 when Trump was still in office—which found that only former President Richard Nixon, a Republican, had a lower approval rating.
The 2023 Gallup polling was conducted from June 1 to 22 among a random sample of 1,013 adults living in all 50 U.S. states, as well as Washington, D.C. The margin of error was plus or minus 4 percent.
Newsweek reached out to Trump's office via email for comment.
Trump's retrospective rating is higher than Gallup's average approval rating for the former president when he was in office. His average in Gallup's measure is 41 percent, meaning his retrospective rating is five points higher.
"Not only do retrospective approval ratings tend to improve over time, but they also are generally higher than presidents' average job approval ratings while they were in office," Gallup noted.
Only Nixon's retrospective rating is lower than his average during his term.
Gallup's survey found that former President John F. Kennedy had the highest approval rating of the presidents listed at 90 percent, with just 8 percent of respondents saying they disapproved.
Kennedy, a Democrat, was president from 1961 until his assassination in November, 1963. He is often remembered as a glamorous figure along with his wife, first lady Jacqueline Kennedy.
Former President Ronald Reagan, a Republican and an icon of the conservative movement, came in second place with 69 percent approval and 28 percent disapproval.
By far the most unpopular former president was Nixon, who became the first and only U.S. president to resign his office in 1974 following the events of the Watergate scandal. He was later pardoned for any crimes he may have committed by his successor, former President Gerald Ford.
Nixon's approval rating stood at just 34 percent in Gallup's survey, while 65 percent of respondents said they disapproved of him.
Trump's immediate predecessor, former President Barack Obama, had an approval rating of 63 percent in the poll, compared to 37 percent who disapproved. But Obama was still behind former President George H. W. Bush, who had 66 percent approval and 32 percent disapproval.
Bush, a Republican, served just one term from 1989 to 1993 and was the last incumbent president to lose re-election until Trump's defeat by Biden in 2020.
Former presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush were also rated.
However, two former presidents were not included in Gallup's survey—Ford and former President Lyndon B. Johnson, a Democrat. Gallup noted that "nearly 20% of Americans could not offer opinions" about Johnson and Ford during the last survey.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Darragh Roche is a U.S. News Reporter based in Limerick, Ireland. His focus is reporting on U.S. politics. He has ... Read more
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