Pollster Dan Cox said on Tuesday that President Trump is likely to have a worse approval rating than his predecessors if the economy takes a downturn because he is not personally liked by a majority of voters.
“He [Obama] was consistently viewed better personally than his approval,” Cox, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told Hill.TV’s Joe Concha on “What America’s Thinking.”
“Trump’s the opposite. So his personable favorability has always been a little bit lower than his approval, so he doesn’t have that reservoir of goodwill and public support that past presidents have been able to rely on,” he continued.
“So if the economy turns, he’s basically without a safety net,” he said.
Various polling shows that Trump tends to get more negative ratings on his personal traits.
A Pew Research Center study released in October found that 70 percent of respondents said they would not describe Trump has even-tempered, while 61 percent said they would not characterize him as trustworthy.
Another 61 percent said they would not say that the president “cares about people like me,” and 57 percent said they would not describe Trump as well-informed.
Trump has been able to capitalize on economic growth during his tenure in office, but a new Gallup poll shows that Americans appear to have developed negative feelings about the economy.
Gallup found in a new poll that the number of respondents who say the economy is doing “better” has dropped 12 points over the last two months.
— Julia Manchester
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