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Monday, April 17, 2017

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows that 50% of Likely U.S. Voters approve of President Trump’s job performance. Fifty percent (50%) disapprove.

This is the first time the president’s overall approval rating has been back in the 50s in nearly a month. Just after his inauguration, Trump’s job approval peaked at 59% and remained in the 50s every day until early March. It’s gone as low as 42% since then.

Here are former President Obama’s approval ratings by comparison.

The latest figures for Trump include 30% who Strongly Approve of the way Trump is performing and 39% who Strongly Disapprove. This gives him a Presidential Approval Index rating of -9. (see trends).

Regular updates are posted Monday through Friday at 9:30 a.m. Eastern (sign up for free daily e-mail update).

Tensions with North Korea continue to rise, with Vice President Mike Pence now on the scene. Thirty-seven percent (37%) of voters said earlier this month that the United States should use military force to prevent North Korea’s further development of nuclear weapons.

Once again, the overwhelming majority of Americans have filed their income taxes just in the nick of time. 

An increasing number are worried that the Internal Revenue Service will audit their taxes, though.

Only 45% have even a somewhat favorable opinion of the IRS, and voters are evenly divided when asked if they trust the federal agency to fairly enforce tax laws.

(More below)

Judge Neil Gorsuch joins the U.S. Supreme Court this week. A month ago, only 43% of voters felt Gorsuch deserved the job, but that’s more positive than voters felt about both of Obama’s choices for the high court – Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

Fifty percent (50%) of Americans planned to attend a church service to celebrate Easter.

See “What They Told Us” in surveys last week.

(More below)

Some readers wonder how we come up with our job approval ratings for the president since they often don’t show as dramatic a change as some other pollsters do. It depends on how you ask the question and whom you ask.

To get a sense of longer-term job approval trends for the president, Rasmussen Reports compiles our tracking data on a full month-by-month basis.

Rasmussen Reports has been a pioneer in the use of automated telephone polling techniques, but many other firms still utilize their own operator-assisted technology (see methodology).

Daily tracking results are collected via telephone surveys of 500 likely voters per night and reported on a three-day rolling average basis. To reach those who have abandoned traditional landline telephones, Rasmussen Reports uses an online survey tool to interview randomly selected participants from a demographically diverse panel. The margin of sampling error for the full sample of 1,500 Likely Voters is +/- 2.5 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Results are also compiled on a full-week basis and crosstabs for full-week results are available for Platinum Members.