FedSmith recently asked readers a few days ago: are now in. There are also over 1,200 comments on that topic in the discussion at the end of that introductory article. Readers are invited to add their opinions in the comments section following this article.
Overall, President Trump received a positive performance rating from readers. 51.6% of all responses to the survey rated his performance at “Meets Expectations” or higher.
45.2% rated the president’s performance as “Outstanding” or “Exceeds Expectations.”
About 48.4% rated the president as “Below Expectations” or “Unsatisfactory.”
Among Republicans, 83% rated President Trump as “Meets Expectations” or higher. Among Democrats, about 88% rated his performance as either “Unsatisfactory” or “Below Expectations.”
Among independent voters, about 49% rated the president as “Meets Expectations” or higher and about 51% rated him as “Below expectations” or “Unsatisfactory.”
Ratings for President Jump Since June 2017
The most recent results of this survey show a marked improvement in the view of President Trump’s performance.
In June 2017, the performance results among respondents were considerably different. In that survey, the most common rating for the president’s performance was “Unsatisfactory.” 53.07% of those responding selected this option.
Overall, about 62% selected “Unsatisfactory” or “Below Expectations.”
13.58% selected “Outstanding.” Overall, 38.3% selected categories from “Outstanding” to “Meets Expectations” in that June survey.
Comparing President Obama to President Trump
People tend to view events from a different perspective after the passage of time or we forget how we may have felt at a point in the past.
The nation’s news media are currently full of stories critical of President Trump. There are a number of articles about a “deep state” consisting of federal officials reportedly working against the president and articles purporting to show dissatisfaction among the federal workforce about President Trump. No doubt, there are strong emotions from some who do not like the current president.
Our view of a president may change during the four or eight years of an administration. For comparison, we looked to see what FedSmith readers thought about President Obama’s performance at a similar point in his administration to President Trump.
In December 2009, FedSmith did a similar survey asking readers how they would rate President Obama’s performance after he had been in office for about 11 months. Over 3,300 people responded to that survey which asked similar questions about the president’s performance.
Readers were asked to rate the president’s performance as A, B, C, D or F with A being the highest rating. In that survey, President Obama had an approval rating of 40% in the highest three categories. His rating in the two lowest performance categories was about 59%. About 1% of respondents selected “undecided.”
The results of the FedSmith survey were similar to the results of a nationwide survey released at about the same time which showed 56% of those polled disapproved of President Obama’s performance.
How is the United States is Progressing?
In the current survey of readers’ perceptions of President Trump, 51.6% of survey respondents indicated the country is heading in the right direction. 48.4% said the country is heading in the wrong direction.
Political Affiliation of Respondents
The largest category of those responding were self-identified as independent voters with about 44.7% selecting this option. 27.8% were Republicans and 19.6% were Democrats.
How Did Respondents Vote in the Last Election?
47% of those responding voted for Donald Trump in the last election. 36.2% voted for Hillary Clinton. About 16.8% selected “other” as their choice for president in the last election.
Respondents’ Demographics
61% of those responding to this survey said they were current federal employees and 35% were federal retirees. 1.5% had no affiliation with the federal workforce and the remainder were active or retired military personnel, contractors or employees of a union representing federal employees.
We would like to thank the several thousand readers who took the time to respond to this survey.
