The following article by Alicia Cohn was posted on the Hill website October 29, 2017:
Just 38 percent of Americans approve of President Trump’s job performance, according to a new poll released Sunday.
A majority — 58 percent — disapprove of Trump’s performance as president in the new NBC News/Wall Street Journal Poll.
That rating is the lowest approval rating of any modern president at this point in his tenure, according to the pollsters. The same poll found former President George W. Bush had 88 percent approval at this point in his presidency, former President Barack Obama had 51 percent and former President Bill Clinton had 47 percent.
It’s also a slight drop, but within the poll’s margin of error, compared to September’s poll and the lowest rating yet of Trump’s presidency by the polling group at Public Opinion Strategies.
Trump largely lost ground among independent adults and white adults without a college degree.
Self-identifying independents polled shifted in their opinion of Trump, from 41 percent approval in September to 34 percent in October. Support from white adults without a college degree dropped from 58 percent to 51 percent.
A majority of those polled, 59 percent, disapproved of Trump’s attacks on NFL players who protest at games during the national anthem.
“This is his worst showing of his young presidency so far,” Democratic pollster Fred Yang of Hart Research Associates told NBC News. Yang co-conducted the survey.
The NBC/WSJ poll was conducted Oct. 23-26 among 900 adults and has an overall margin of error of 3.3 percentage points.