President Donald Trump attacked new polls from ABC and NBC as fake news and "totally wrong in general" Monday morning (April 24), only 12 hours after saying new polls were "very good considering that much of the media is FAKE and almost always negative" and quoting stats from an ABC News/Washington Post poll, in which 53% of respondents said he was a strong leader
He also continued to maintain he would have won the popular vote, a curious claim that surfaces periodically, tweeting the assertion "Would still beat Hillary in popular vote," though it was unclear what he meant since Democratic candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton won the popular vote by several million.
An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released Sunday (April 23) found that 54% disapproved of the job President Trump is doing, compared with 40% who approved. The poll found that 82% of Republicans approved of his job performance to date (he marks his first 100 days in office April 29), while only 30% of Independents and just 7% of Democrats approved.
Only 50% of respondents in the NBC/WSJ poll gave Trump high marks for being firm and decisive, down from 57% in a February poll. He got "honest and trustworthy" high marks from only 25%, down from 34% in February.
The poll was conducted April 17-20 among 900 adults. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points.
The ABC/WaPo poll found that 42% approved of Trump's performance as president vs. 53% who disapproved, compared with an average approval/disapproval split of 69%/19% for past presidents in the first 100-days window.
Just 37% approve of Trump's plans for changes in federal spending --which include cuts to the EPA and state funding as well as zeroing out federal funding for noncommercial TV and radio stations, among others. And only 34% approved of his daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner having major posts in the administration.
But the poll had some "brighter" spots for the president, finding that 73% approved of his pressuring companies to stay in the U.S., and the 53% who said he was a strong leader. In addition, 96% of Republicans who voted for Trump said they would do it again, so there was no buyer's remorse, as the poll put it.
The ABC/WaPo poll was conducted April 17-20, in English and Spanish, among a random sample of 1,004 adults. The margin of error is 3.5 points.
