President Trump's Approval Rating Dips To New Low

WASHINGTON, DC — As President Trump takes a 17-day vacation at his golf club in New Jersey, avoiding the tumult of a White House undergoing significant renovations, he cannot escape the judgmental eyes of the public. And according to a swath of new polling, he is not faring well — in fact, he's reached his lowest point of public approval in his young presidency to date.

FiveThirtyEight's aggregate polling metric, which combines recent surveys of popular sentiment and weights them according to their reliability, has Trump at a 36.6 percent approval rating in the country. About 57.4 percent of the country disapproves of his job performance. (For more information on this and other political stories, subscribe to the White House Patch to receive daily newsletters and breaking news alerts.)

Watch: Trump Says His Base Is 'Stronger Than Ever.' Recent Polling Doesn't.

Even Rasmussen, one of the president's favorite polls that typically favors Republicans, has Trump at an approval rating of only 41 percent. Investor's Business Daily has Trump at a low of 32 percent.

About six months in, most presidential approval ratings are on the decline. The excitement of inauguration tends to bring a polling bump, and it's nearly inevitable that this enthusiasm will fade as hopes give way to reality. But even at the beginning, Trump's approval rating was below that of his recent predecessors — and things have only gotten worse.

At this point in their presidencies, Bill Clinton had an approval rating of 41.1 percent, George W. Bush had an approval rating of 55.7 percent and Barack Obama could claim the approval of 54.3 percent of Americans, according to FiveThirtyEight.

Trump has tried to downplay the bad news, tweeting out, "The Trump base is far bigger & stronger than ever before (despite some phony Fake News polling)." He also took the time Monday to attack Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut of Twitter.

With efforts to overhaul Obamacare entirely stalled, high-level staff shakeups in the White House, a major federal investigation underway of the president and his associates and Trump's habit of lashing out when cornered, it's not hard to imagine what might be pushing the numbers down. Still, there's always variation in a president's approval rating over time, and a few high-profile successes could help turn around the administration's apparent downward trajectory.

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