It is sad when a president has to brag by tweet that he finally broke the 50 percent marker in the Rasmussen Reports Daily Presidential Tracking poll. After all, he was the only president in recent history to never break that 50 percentage in his first two years. Yet, Donald Trump’s tweet did not tell the whole story.
Rasmussen’s poll reached a full 52 percent approval rating for for Trump’s job performance among likely U.S. voters Forty-seven percent disapproved.
Statistics does not come up with a yes or no answer in polls. What happens is that the margin of error tells us not to get as excited as Donald Trump over that 52 percent approval, because it just as easily could have been a 49.5 percent approval.
Rasmussen contacted 500 likely voters each night by telephone. The margin of error is plus or minus (+/-) 2.5 percentage points. It had a 95 percent level of confidence. What that means is that Trump’s daily approval poll could have been 52 percent plus 2.5 percentage points (54.4 percent), or his approval rating could have been 52 percent minus 2.5 percentage points (49.5 percent.)
According to Rasmussen’s poll, Trump’s approval index over the past two years showed that he started off with an Approval Index under 45 percentage points. His ranking dropped like a rock until July 24, 2017 when it reached 24 percent.
The slow uptick took Trump to nearly 40 percent around the 2018 midterm elections. Then, his approval rating started a downward trend, reaching 31 percent. On February 11, 2019 his Approval Index reached 39 percent.
Conversely, Trump’s strongly disapprove rating began at 32 percent and reached 50 percent on July 24, 2017. By May 30, 2018, his rating reached 38 percent. From there, the rating jumped between 38 percent to a high of 47 percent through the remainder of his term.
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Featured image is a screenshot via YouTube.
