Gallup: 54% say Trump not making progress changing Washington

President Donald Trump waits to greet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the White House in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. In a Gallup poll, 54 percent of the respondents say Trump has made progress on his goal of changing the way Washington works. Forty percent say he's made progress. Photo by Kevin Dietsch/UPI

May 4 (UPI) — A majority of Americans believe President Donald Trump has not made progress on his goal of changing the way Washington works, according to a Gallup survey.

In the poll, 54 percent say the new Republican president had not made progress compared with 40 percent who say he has.

The poll was conducted April 21-22 among 1,024 adults, aged 18 and older, in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.

These results contrast with Barack Obama three months after his first term began in 2009, when 53 percent of the respondents said the Democrat made progress and 45 percent said no.

Both presidents promised change despite coming from different parties and backgrounds.

Trump was a businessman and Washington outsider who promised during the campaign to “drain the swamp” in Washington.

Obama, a one-term senator from Illinois, promised in his 2008 presidential campaign to institute ethics reforms to make Washington more responsive and more effective.

Obama limited the hiring of lobbyists in his administration and released records of visitors to the White House. Trump doesn’t release the visitor logs but has instituted a five-year ban on former government officials lobbying their former colleagues.

Trump has brought in many Washington outsiders to key positions, including businessmen.

At the 100-day mark, Obama’s job approval was 63 percent and Trump’s was 41 percent.

Opinions about the success of their efforts are driven by political partisanship.

Among Republicans, 78 percent say Trump has made progress while 79 percent of Democrats say he hasn’t. Among independents, 58 percent saying he’s not made progress and 32 percent say the opposite.

Regarding whether Obama made progress, he had less support from Democrats — 69 percent — than Trump does among his party. But independents were more favorable with 49 percent saying Obama made progress and 47 percent he didn’t. A little more than a third of Republicans — 36 percent — said he had made progress.

The margin of the error in the survey on Trump is 4 percentage points.

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