Trump fumes about supposedly ‘fake’ polls giving him a dismal approval rating

President Trump continues to rant about a pair of new polls that show he is approaching his 100th day in office with the lowest approval rating of any president in more than 70 years.

“The two fake news polls released yesterday, ABC & NBC, while containing some very positive info, were totally wrong in General E. Watch!” Trump tweeted early Monday morning.

According to a new ABC News/Washington Post poll released Sunday, just 42 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s performance as president, while 53 percent disapprove. On average, past presidents have enjoyed a 69 percent approval, 19 percent disapproval split at or near their first 100-day mark, according to the survey.

A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll also released Sunday showed nearly two-thirds of Americans (64 percent) give Trump “poor or middling marks for his first 100 days in office” — including 45 percent who say he’s off to a “poor start.” The survey also found Trump’s overall job-approval rating at 40 percent as he approaches 100 days — the lowest job-approval rating for a new president at this point in the history of the NBC/WSJ poll.

(Source: ABC News/Washington Post)
Source: ABC News/Washington Post

Trump’s assertion that the same polls were “totally wrong” about the general election is misleading.

The final national polls taken by both ABC/Washington Post and NBC/Wall Street Journal showed Clinton with a 4-point lead over Trump. Clinton won the popular vote by 2.1 percent — well within the margins of error (2.5 and 2.7 percent, respectively) for each survey.

As for the “positive info” Trump referred to, the ABC/Washington Post poll released Sunday showed that 73 percent of Americans approve of Trump pressuring companies to keep jobs in the United States. (That number includes “most Democrats, liberals and nonwhites … three groups that are broadly critical of Trump more generally,” per the poll.)

And a slim majority (53 percent) say Trump is a “strong leader,” compared with 45 percent who say he is not. The survey found also that a whopping 96 percent of those who voted for Trump in November say they have no regrets and would vote for him again.

Late Sunday, Trump tweeted his reaction to the newly released polls, saying that they “are very good considering that much of the media is FAKE and almost always negative.”

The president also falsely claimed that the ABC/Washington Post poll proved he would “still” beat Hillary Clinton in the popular vote if the election were held today.

Trump never won the popular vote. Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 3 million more votes overall, finishing with 65,844,610 (48.2 percent) compared to Trump’s 62,979,636 (46.1 percent).

The ABC/Washington Post survey suggested that because fewer Clinton voters (85 percent) said they would vote for her than Trump voters (96 percent) would for him, it would result in an overall Trump victory (43 percent to 40 percent) over Clinton in a “hypothetical re-do.”

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