President Donald Trump has seen a slight upward trend in his overall rating of approval for his office since President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the November 3 presidential election, according to two new polls.
Biden officially surpassed the 270 votes needed to win the electoral college on Saturday after Associated Press, Fox News and other television stations projected Pennsylvania and Nevada for the Democrat. Although Trump and his supporters have made unsubstantiated allegations that Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris won through widespread electoral fraud, they have not presented any solid evidence to support these allegations.
Before the election, Trump’s approval rating on November 2 was 52 percent, according to the conservative polling firm Rasmussen Reports. By November 11, the approval rate had risen to 53 percent, according to the polling company. While 48 percent of Americans rejected the president before the election, according to the survey the figure is now only 36 percent.
Separate survey data from TheEconomist/YouGov showed that 45 percent of registered voters agreed with Trump in the survey conducted between October 31 and November 2. In a new survey conducted November 8-10, The Economist/YouGov found that 46 percent of registered voters agreed with the president – again a slight increase. While the survey found that 54 percent rejected the president before the election, 51 percent are now opposed.
By comparison, former President Barack Obama had an approval rating of 55 percent one week after Trump’s defeat in 2016 by former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, according to Rasmussen Reports. Before the election it was 52 percent. However, the situation is not directly comparable, as Obama ended his second term in office while Trump has now missed a second term.
Although Biden, along with the electoral college, won the popular vote by a margin of more than 5 million votes over Trump, the President, along with Biden, also received more votes than any other presidential candidate in the history of the United States. Previously, Obama held the record for the most individual votes, with around 69.5 million votes in his favor in his first term in office in 2008. The latest Fox News election count shows Biden with just over 77 million votes, while Trump received 72 million votes.
While Trump has not yet given in as his campaign continues to take legal action with little success, a new poll by Reuters/Ipsos shows that the vast majority of Americans understand that Biden won the election. The survey found that 79 percent of adult Americans believe that Biden won, while only 3 percent believe that Trump won. Another 13 percent say the election results are not yet known and 5 percent say they don’t know….
