Jonathan Bernstein, Columnist

The Least Popular President

Trump asked to be president of only some of the people in his inaugural address. It looks like he's getting his wish.

January 26, 2017 at 8:22 PM UTC

Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics. A former professor of political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio, he wrote A Plain Blog About Politics.

How low can his approvals go?
Photographer: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Provide news feedback or report an error

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

This article is for subscribers only.

The numbers are in, and we can call it now: Donald Trump has the worst approval numbers of any first-week president of the polling era. By far. It's not close.

The current HuffPollster estimate has 39 percent approving of his brand-new presidency and 41 percent disapproving.1485459372481 That's stunning. Barack Obama, hardly the most popular president, never fell below 42 percent approval according to that average at any point of his eight years in office.