New Gallup poll shows most Americans don't think Trump can do the job
By Jon Queally, staff writer for Common Dreams
By Jon Queally, staff writer for Common Dreams
With
his inauguration now less than three weeks away, a new survey shows a majority
of the American people are far from confident that Donald Trump, a former
reality television star who won the Electoral College but lost the popular vote
by nearly 3 million votes, is up to the major tasks entrusted to the President
of the United States.
According
to results released by Gallup on January 2, "less
than half of Americans are confident in [Trump's] ability to handle an
international crisis (46%), to use military force wisely (47%) or to prevent
major scandals in his administration (44%)."
Those
numbers are far lower than measures taken on Trump's most recent
predecessors—Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton—all of whom had
percentages close to 70% in each of those categories prior to their taking
office.
Even in areas where those polled expressed higher confidence in Trump, he still came up with much lower ratings than those who came before him.
As
this breakdown shows:
As Gallup notes, these figures are consistent with other polling showing Trump with historically low overall approval ratings both before and since his election victory.
Last
month, a separate Gallup poll found
that people also had a historically low approval of how President-elect Trump
was handling his transition, a figure that is normally higher than overall
approval numbers.