No matter the repeated claims from Donald Trump and his allies about the supposed support that they have among the American people, a recently released Gallup survey has revealed that President-elect Joe Biden is apparently already more popular than Trump has been at any point of his presidency. In the new Gallup survey, 55 percent of respondents expressed a favorable view of Biden, which is 6 percent higher than his pre-election number. Before the election, Trump’s favorability stood at 45 percent — but after the election, just 42 percent of respondents expressed a favorable view of the outgoing president, according to recent Gallup numbers.
Biden has actually hit a point similar to his post-election favorability level in a Gallup survey in the past. In February 2019, the pollster found that 56 percent of respondents said that they had a favorable view of the ex-vice president. Trump “never actually got above 50% in any live interview poll” of his favorability level during his recent time in the presidential spotlight, CNN’s Harry Enten reported recently. In other words, Trump has really never had the apparent unequivocal support of a majority of Americans. As explained elsewhere, he didn’t even win the most votes when he first became president after the 2016 election! Instead, he won enough individual states to win a majority in results from the electoral college, offsetting his overall loss in the national popular vote.
At this point, Trump hasn’t conclusively acknowledged the reality that he lost the recent election, at least in public. He continues to maintain that he won the election, despite the fact that every single state has certified last year’s results, confirming his loss. Furthermore, judges across the country — including a slew of the president’s own appointees — have rejected the president’s claims. Even the U.S. Supreme Court, where three of the outgoing president’s picks sit, rejected one of the many Trump-supported fights against the election outcome. Trump responded, in part, by whining on Twitter that he is “very disappointed in the United States Supreme Court, and so is our great country!”
I am very disappointed in the United States Supreme Court, and so is our great country!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 18, 2020
Going forward, there’s another important Election Day on the horizon — on January 5, Georgia voters who haven’t participated in early voting will head to the polls to make their voices heard in the state’s two ongoing Senate races. If Democrats win both of these races, then the chamber will be 50-50 — and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will be tasked with breaking any ties, handing Democrats Senate control.
