U.S. President Donald Trump has nowhere to go but up, according to a new poll.
The current chief executive scored a 39% approval rating in the new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll — the lowest approval rating in the survey's history for any modern president, one year into his term.
The poll was conducted Jan. 13 to 17, after the uproar began over Trump's vulgar description of Haiti and African nations and while chances of a government shutdown grew as Congress scrambled to reach a funding deal. Saturday is the first anniversary of Trump's inauguration.
The poll said 51% of respondents to the poll said they strongly disapproved of Trump's performance in the Oval Office, a record high. Overall, 57% of people said they disapproved of the president's job.
In February, just after Trump took office, 44% of respondents in the poll said they approved of the president's performance, while 48% disapproved.
Trump's administration has been beset by turmoil since the beginning, marked by unusually high amounts of senior staff turnover and a criminal investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin during the 2016 election.
Trump, badly needing a major early legislative win, pushed for repeal of Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act, but the effort fizzled on multiple occasions in 2017 before the president and the Republican-controlled Congress moved on to a sweeping tax-cut bill. Trump signed the measure into law in December. Polls have shown that voters are dubious about the tax bill's benefits, which slashed corporate tax rates and eliminated several popular individual deductions, but Trump has insisted people will see more money in their paycheques.
For the time being, however, voters are skeptical of the president, according to the NBC/WSJ poll. His approval ratings from some of his major constituent groups — whites, men and seniors — are below 50%, the latest findings show.
