July 24 (UPI) — More Americans now approve of the job President Donald Trump is doing than at any other period of his presidency, new poll research showed Tuesday.
The Gallup Poll showed Trump’s approval rating at 42 percent for the sixth quarter of his administration. The quarter ran from April 20 through July 19.
His latest rating is an improvement over the 39.1 percent he saw in the fifth quarter.
The sixth quarter included a personal high of 45 percent during the week of his historic June 12 summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
The approval rating after his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, where he publicly doubted U.S. intelligence accounts of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, appeared unaffected.
Trump’s best mark, however, is still historically low compared with the nine other post-World War II presidents in their first term in office. It is the lowest of all but one — Jimmy Carter, who held a 41.8 percent approval in his sixth quarter in 1978.
Party lines show an expected divide on Trump’s sixth quarter, with 88 percent approval among Republicans, 36 percent among independents and 9 percent among Democrats.
The poll notes other presidents were also below 50 percent approval at this point in their presidencies, including Ronald Reagan (44.2 percent), Bill Clinton (46.1 percent) and Barack Obama (47.3 percent), who all three, like Carter, were serving during challenging economic times.
George W. Bush had the highest sixth-quarter average, 74.9 percent, which came just seven months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
From a broader perspective, Trump’s sixth-quarter average ranks in the bottom fifth of the nearly 300 presidential quarters in Gallup’s polling history.
Results were based on interviews with more than 19,000 adults and has a margin of error of 1 point.
