President Donald Trump’s approval ratings are the lowest of any president upon their first week in office, but Republicans tend to have lower ratings than Democrats when they enter the White House, according to an analysis by statistics site 538.
The most popular president was Democrat Harry Truman, who earned an 87 percent approval rating when he took office in 1945. Only 3 percent of Americans disapproved of Truman when he took office. That rating fell by the end of his eight-year term in 1953. His approval ratings hovered around 30 percent by the end of his term, a significant drop over the period.
The top of the list is full of Democrats. Lyndon B. Johnson earned a 78 percent approval rating in his first week in office, but fell to just under 50 percent when he left office, largely due to the fact he continued the Vietnam War.
Gerald Ford was the most liked Republican according to the rankings, starting at 71 percent approval during his first week in office. He had a fairly low average approval rating of 47.2 percent over the course of his eight years.
John Kennedy maintained fairly stable ratings during his short presidency. Dwight Eisenhower is the second most liked Republican president in the modern era. Eisenhower earned a 68 percent approval rating, higher than Democrats Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama.
The Republicans starts to come into the fold with Richard Nixon’s 59 percent approval rating for his first weeks in office. George H.W. Bush comes next, with a 51 percent approval rating. Ronald Reagan was rated behind H.W. Bush, despite the fact that he held a slightly higher approval rating at 55 percent, but more people opposed him, with 18 percent of the population disapproving of Reagan during his first week in office.
When the ratings are averaged out for the entirety of the administration, the numbers change drastically. Nixon rises above Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, and Eisenhower rises to second most popular president. Reagan also received a bump for the actions he took in office, but Obama fell drastically to close to last place, with a stunningly low average approval rating of 47.9 percent over the eight years he held office.
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