President Trump’s job approval dips after State of the Union bump

President Trump’s job approval rating dropped two points in the latest Hill-HarrisX poll, dipping after the bump he appeared to get from his State of the Union address.

Forty-five percent of registered voters contacted Feb. 17-18 said they approved of the way that Trump has been carrying out his official duties, down from 47 percent who said the same on Feb. 7-8.

The majority of voters, 55 percent, said they disapproved of the president’s job performance, up two points from the previous survey.

While Trump’s numbers declined somewhat in the most recent Hill-HarrisX poll, they are still fairly similar to the ratings he has received in the past.

“We saw a little bit of softening, we saw it in our Ipsos-Reuters poll as well, a little bit of softening during the shutdown,” Mallory Newall, research director at Ipsos Public Affairs told Hill.TV on Friday when asked about Trump’s approval rating.

“But his numbers really don’t move that much though,” she added. “He tends to be in the low- to mid-forties, generally speaking, sort of able to withstand whatever events happen.”

Younger voters gave the president his lowest marks. Only 35 percent of respondents between 18 and 34 said they approved of Trump’s job performance.

Slightly older respondents viewed the president favorably. Fifty-three percent of voters between 35 and 49 gave the president a positive rating while 47 percent gave him a negative one.

Voters older than 50 were somewhat in the middle with 55 percent disapproving of Trump’s job performance and 45 percent approving.

The vast majority of Republicans, 79 percent, gave the president a positive rating while 21 percent disapproved.

Democratic respondents were even more lopsided in their negative opinion with 82 percent disapproving of Trump and 18 percent approving.

Independent voters were in-between both groups of partisans but a majority still disapproved, 58 to 42 percent.

The latest Hill-HarrisX survey was conducted among a nationally representative sample of registered voters and has a sampling margin of error of 3.1 percentage points.

—Matthew Sheffield