Rating President Trump on the Issues

Voters now give President Trump the highest marks of his presidency when it comes to his handling of the economy and national security. He's doing better than President Obama was going into the 2012 election.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 52% of Likely U.S. Voters rate Trump’s handling of the economy as good or excellent despite the pounding it’s taken this year from the coronavirus lockdown. That’s up from 39% in mid-2017 just after he took office and edges his previous high of 51% in October 2018. Thirty-seven percent (37%) say he’s doing a poor job. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Forty-nine percent (49%) think the president is doing a good or excellent job handling national security issues. This, too, is up from 39% three years ago and the previous high of 47% in June of last year. Forty-one percent (41%) believe Trump is doing a poor job in this area.

At this point in his presidency in mid-September 2012, 41% of voters said Barack Obama was doing a good or excellent job handling the economy, and 46% gave him positive marks for national security.

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The survey of 1,000 Likely U.S. Voters was conducted September 13-14, 2020 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Trump’s overall job approval has been in the high 40s and low 50s in recent days in Rasmussen Reports’ daily Presidential Tracking Poll. But Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden holds a two-point lead over Trump in our weekly White House Watch survey.

Men are a lot more appreciative of Trump’s job performance than women are. Middle-aged voters are the most critical.

Other minority voters like the job the president is doing on both the economy and national security more than whites and blacks do.

Those who work in the private sector give Trump higher marks than government employees.

Over 80% of Republicans and more than 50% of voters not affiliated with either major party give Trump positive marks in both areas. Roughly 20% of Democrats agree.

As the coronavirus lockdown eases in many parts of the country, economic confidence has jumped to its highest level since March when the lockdown began.

U.S. voters tend to see the surprise agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates as the breakthrough to peace in the Middle East and are more comfortable than they have been in years with the level of American involvement in the region.

Sixty percent (60%) of voters agreed with Trump last year when he said, “It is time for us to get out of these ridiculous endless wars, many of them tribal, and bring our soldiers home.” He is the first president since Jimmy Carter not to commit the United States to a new war and is bringing troops home on several fronts.

Additional information from this survey and a full demographic breakdown are available to Platinum Members only.

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