Iowa Poll: Trump's approval rating is underwater with Iowans

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Donald Trump is starting his presidency underwater with Iowans.

Forty-two percent of Iowans approve of the job the newly inaugurated Republican is doing as president, while 49 percent disapprove, according to the latest Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll.

Trump won Iowa on his way to the White House by 9 percentage points in November, his widest victory among states believed by many to be swing states. Iowa Republicans overwhelmingly approve of Trump’s early actions, with 82 percent saying they approve of his job performance. But Democrats register nearly the opposite reaction, with 86 percent disapproving of his performance.

The numbers underscore the state’s deeply polarized political environment, and stand as an outlier compared to polling from when previous presidents first took office. The poll of 802 Iowans was conducted Feb. 6-9 by Selzer & Co. and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

Independents are leaning against the new president: 50 percent disapprove of his handling of the presidency while 39 percent approve.

“He scares me every time he tweets,” said poll respondent Clarissa Gadient, a political independent from Davenport. “I mean, really and truly, it’s about security, and I don’t feel it at all."

Gadient, 58, a caregiver who’s been unemployed since last fall, said Trump’s early actions in office have left her “fatigued” and deeply uncertain about his readiness for the presidency.

Trump’s supporters, meanwhile, see a president who’s moving to enact the promises he made on the campaign trail.

“He’s doing everything he promised,” said Cody Marsh, 32, a power-line worker from rural Tabor in far southwest Iowa. “He hasn’t done any more or any less.”

Marsh, an independent who voted for Trump, noted his executive orders seeking to restrict immigration and refugee resettlement and to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border in particular, as well as his nomination of a conservative justice to the Supreme Court.

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Prior presidential approval ratings

It’s unprecedented in the history of the Iowa Poll to see a president begin his first term with such low approval ratings. Since The Des Moines Register began asking about presidential job approval in February 1964, no president in the early weeks of his first term has ever before seen more Iowans disapproving than approving. 

The first Iowa Poll of Democrat Barack Obama’s presidency in 2009 put his approval rating at 68 percent. For Republican George Bush, it was 54 percent in 2001. For Democrat Bill Clinton, it was 73 percent in 1993 and for Republican Ronald Reagan, it was 54 percent in 1981.

(The Register did not poll on presidential approval ratings early on in Republican George H.W. Bush’s term.)

Trump’s job approval does roughly match Obama’s outgoing rating, however. Last October, 52 percent of Iowans disapproved of his performance, while 43 percent approved.

So where is Trump strong?

Beyond his wide support among Republicans, Trump enjoys strong approval ratings from rural voters (64 percent), evangelical Christians (60 percent), residents of Iowa’s 4th Congressional District (55 percent), Iowans ages 35-54 (51 percent) and men (50 percent).

Vice President Mike Pence, meanwhile, is viewed positively by a plurality of Iowans. Forty-eight percent approve of the job he’s doing compared to 38 percent who disapprove.

On the right track?

With Trump as president, most Iowans believe the nation is headed in the wrong direction: 51 percent of Iowa Poll respondents say the nation is on the wrong track, compared with 36 percent who say it’s headed in the right direction.

But that’s not necessarily bad news. Those numbers are sharply improved from last fall and match public sentiment from the early weeks of Obama’s two terms. The latest figures are the best since February 2013, just after Obama was inaugurated for his second term, and basically match Iowans’ feelings from January 2009, when Obama first took office.

Just four months ago, 71 percent of Iowans said the U.S. was on the wrong track, and just 21 percent said it was going in the right direction.

That’s a 20-point decline in the percentage of people with negative feelings on the country’s direction and a 15-point improvement in those with a positive view.

That rapid change of perception is attributable largely to self-identified Republicans. In October, 88 percent of Republicans said the country was on the wrong track, compared with just 7 percent who said it was headed in the right direction. 

Now, their views have virtually flipped: 71 percent of Republicans now say the nation is on the right track and just 15 percent say it’s going in the wrong direction.

It’s a similar, if less dramatic, story with independents. A narrow, 51-percent majority of independents say the country is on the wrong track, while 33 percent say it’s headed in the right direction. In October, 76 percent saw the country on the wrong track against 15 percent who thought it was headed in the right direction. 

Democrats four months ago were evenly split on the question; now 84 percent say the country’s on the wrong track against 9 percent who say it’s headed in the right direction. 

Views on the state of Iowa’s direction, meanwhile, have ticked downward.

Forty-two percent of Iowans say the state is headed in the right direction, while 41 percent say the state is on the wrong track. That right-track reading is down from 48 percent last October, and is the lowest measure of confidence since February 2011. The wrong-track figure is up slightly from October.

Part of the decline can be attributed to younger Iowans, who have grown substantially more pessimistic in recent months. A 45-percent plurality of respondents under 35 said the state was on the right track last October — now just 36 percent hold that view. These young Iowans’ optimism is down 19 percentage points from a year ago. 

Democrats, too, are registering skepticism with where the state is headed. Four months ago, 46 percent said they believed things were moving in the right direction. Now that number is down more than half, at 21 percent.

These lower numbers offset an improvement in the state’s rating among Republicans, 68 percent of whom now say things are headed in the right direction compared with 60 percent in the October poll.

About the poll

The Iowa Poll, conducted Feb. 6-9 for The Des Moines Register and Mediacom by Selzer & Co. of Des Moines, is based on telephone interviews with 802 Iowans ages 18 or older. Interviewers with Quantel Research contacted households with randomly selected landline and cellphone numbers supplied by Survey Sampling International. Interviews were administered in English. Responses were adjusted by age and sex to reflect the general population based on recent census data.

Questions based on the sample of 802 Iowa adults have a maximum margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. This means that if this survey were repeated using the same questions and the same methodology, 19 times out of 20, the findings would not vary from the percentages shown here by more than plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. Results based on smaller samples of respondents — such as by gender or age — have a larger margin of error.

Poll methodology is available here.

Republishing the copyright Iowa Poll without credit to The Des Moines Register and Mediacom is prohibited.