In the latest official Gallup polling of the President's job performance, US President Donald Trump has reached his lowest rating of public approval. Gallup measured that only thirty-six percent of Americans approve of the job that Trump has done, four months into his first term as President. This new data comes directly after the failure of Congressional Republicans to pass the proposed American Health Care Act, which was to be the first in a series of legislation to repeal and replace the affordable care act.
President Trump's approval down five percent from last polling
The previous period of polling Gallup conducted, prior to the failure of the American Health Care Act (AHCA), had Trump's approval at forty-one percent. However, the decision to pull the AHCA from a Congressional vote was seen as a massive failure on the part of both the President and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan.
The AHCA was intended to be the first of three major pieces of legislation that would have repealed and replaced the Affordable Care Act, more commonly known as Obamacare. The AHCA would have ended the individual mandate under Obamacare, which stipulates that all Americans able to purchase insurance must do so. The AHCA also would have cut funding for Medicare and Medicaid, while keeping some components of Obamacare in place.
Prior to this latest round of polling, Trump's lowest approval rating had been calculated by Gallup to be in mid-March at thirty-seven percent. The President now sits one percentage point lower, and had officially sunk lower in approval ratings than former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton did through their entire presidencies.
Gallup shows now that fifty-seven percent of Americans explicitly disapprove of Trump's job in office.
As AHCA fails, majority of Americans favor a single-payer plan
Gallup polling also demonstrates that, when presented with three different options for the future of American health care, fifty-eight percent of the American public favors replacing the Affordable Care Act with a single-payer, Medicare-for-all program that would provide all Americans with health insurance. Trump has had positive things to say about single-payer in the past, and many pundits believe it would be politically savvy of him to pursue single-payer legislation.
