Trump’s approval ratings steady despite family separation policy

Kevin Lamarque | Reuters

President Donald Trump pumps his fist as he steps from Air Force One upon arrival in Las Vegas, Nevada, June 23, 2018. 

President Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy, which dominated headlines last week and resulted in more than 2,000 children being separated from their families near the southern border, largely hasn’t affected the way voters view the president.

Despite public outrage over the policy of separating children from their parents who crossed into the United States unauthorized, the president’s approval rating has not deviated from its recent upward trend, according to recently released surveys.

An average of presidential approval polls compiled by the data analysis website FiveThirtyEight shows that 42.3 percent of voters approve of the president, compared to 51.6 percent who disapprove. The number of voters who say they approve of the president has gone slightly up compared with a week earlier while the portion disapproving has remained constant.

The numbers are surprising in light of widespread dissatisfaction with the family separation policy itself. Two-thirds of Americans disapprove of the policy, and only about a quarter support it, according to a CNN poll published last week. The poll did show that the zero tolerance policy had support from a majority of Republicans.

There was one poll released on Monday that found a notable decline in the president’s approval rating. Gallup found that 41 percent of voters surveyed last week approved of the job the president was doing. That’s down from 45 percent who told the polling service they supported the president the week before.

But Gallup also found that the president’s approval rating is still sitting above his term-average of 39 percent, and remains very high among members of his own party, at 87 percent. The polling outfit noted that the previous week’s number was particularly high because of Trump’s historic nuclear summit in Singapore.

According to the CNBC All-America Economic Survey, a majority of Americans support Trump’s handling of the economy for the first time since he became president, potentially lifting his approval numbers. That survey found that 45 percent of voters supported the president’s handling of immigration, up from 42 percent a year ago.

The number of respondents who said they disapprove of the president was the lowest since he took office, according to the survey.