Trump job approval slips 2 points in Gallup poll

President Trump’s job approval slipped 2 points, down to 40.7 percent, in his 11th quarter in office, according to a Gallup poll released Friday. 

The quarter, which began on July 20 and ends Oct. 19, is not the lowest in Trump’s time in the White House. The 40.7 percent approval sits higher than in five other quarters, with Trump’s low hitting 36.8 percent in his fourth quarter in office. 

{mosads}The 42.7 percent in the 10th quarter had served as Trump’s highest in the Gallup poll since taking office. Gallup notes the 6-point difference between Trump’s highest approval and lowest approval is a relatively small gap.

By comparison, the nine other post-World War II presidents elected to their first term had an average difference of 21 percentage points between their highest and lowest approval averages in their first 11 quarters in office, according to the polling service. 

Gallup attributes Trump’s trend to the highly polarized nature of his approval ratings — which according to Gallup has been consistently high among Republicans and low among Democrats  — as one possible cause of the stability in approval ratings across quarters. 

Despite little change in Trump’s approval rating, his 11th quarter in office has been fairly eventful.

The quarter was marked in September by an impeachment inquiry launched by the House into the president. The House is looking into Trump’s alleged soliciting of Ukraine to interfere in the 2020 election by investigating one of his leading 2020 opponents, former Vice President Joe Biden. 

The most recent quarter was also marked by Trump’s firing of national security adviser John Bolton after negotiations to end U.S. involvement in the Afghanistan War broke down and two mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, Gallup notes. 

More recently, the last quarter has been marked by Trump pulling out troops fighting alongside allied Kurdish forces in Syria, a move that has been criticized by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. 

The Gallup poll is based on interviews conducted between July 16 and Oct. 13 with 12,333 adults in all 50 U.S. states and Washington, D.C. The margin of error is 1 percentage point.