Trump Job Approval & Overall Mood of the Country

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In late December, December 27th to 29th, we interviewed 2010 registered voters by the Harris Poll. The findings also include a flash poll among 1273 registered voters conducted December 30th to 31st. These polls were conducted just before the raid on the Iranian general. If that's changed things, we won't know that until the next poll. But until then, I think that you see a pretty good picture of how America was feeling during this holiday period.

Let's take a look at Trump's approval. Obviously, President Trump was impeached just before the holidays. That impeachment has been held up at this point, not yet sent over to the Senate. The impact of impeachment on his job approval was nothing. He was at 47% in November. In late December, he is at 47%. 47% is among some of the higher ratings. He's typically been 44, 45. He's gotten as high as 48. He has not crossed into majority approval since he took office. And the trend here is from June, when he was at 44, to two months at 45, two months at 46 and now two months at 47% approval. Disapproval mirrors it. It's at 53%. Again, down from 56 in May or June; 55, 54 and now 53.

We go a little deeper and look at the president's approval by some of the various issue areas. His lowest approval has always been administering the government, 44%, basically unchanged over a long period of time. Foreign affairs, 46%; immigration, 48%; fighting terrorism, 55; stimulating jobs, 59; the economy, 60. The two areas that have moved over time, the economy and stimulating jobs. The others have been relatively stable overtime.

Is the country on the right track or the wrong track? Not a lot of change here recently. We're at 39% right track. Again, higher numbers. We started at 34%. We're still at 53% wrong track, not a lot of movement here. Again, we were as low as 29 if you go back to October of 17 when the country felt that there was tremendous gridlock, in particular the healthcare issue. These are slightly better numbers, but still it's been a long time since most Americans think their country is on the right track.

Now, where is there change and significant change? We asked the question, "Do you think the American economy is on the right track or the wrong track?" Right track is now 51%, wrong track is 36%. We've had a spread this big only once before, it was December of 17. You see a very clear pattern here. Remember that just a few months ago, let's call it four or five, six months ago, the Fed was raising interest rates. Economists were predicting a recession. Right track economy actually dipped below wrong track again over the summer. It was 46% wrong track, 43% right track.

Today, there's been a consistent improvement in attitudes towards how the economy's doing across almost all demographics. It is now 51% right track on the economy, 36% wrong track. Americans may not be happy with the direction of their country, but they are happy with the direction of the economy.

A slightly different question shows the same pattern. How strong do you think the US economy is today? And those people who think that it's strong is now up to 75%. That is a record in our poll. It was as high as 74% before all the talk about recession the previous spring. It started out at 61%. There is no question about that, a very, very significant movement. And for the first time, those who say that the economy is weak is down to 25%.