Modern American politics has reached a new level of partisanship and polarization that judges leaders like President Trump not on their accomplishments but their party, according to a new survey.
The Democrat-Republican partisan gap, which reached a record 70 points under former President Barack Obama, has now grown to 77 points and appears to overshadow the types of rallies in approval ratings past presidents had, according to a new Gallup analysis.
“Presidents today may now be judged simply by Americans on shared or divergent partisanship rather than on the president’s accomplishments in office or on the state of the nation,” said the polling service.
The trend started during the Reagan administration and increased under Obama, who Gallup noted maintained the same low presidential approval ratings in his second term that Trump has now.
“Many of these patterns under Trump were in place before he took office. Polarization in presidential approval ratings began to expand under Reagan and has accelerated with each president since Clinton. And while Obama had a strong honeymoon, his support generally held in the 40s after that until his last year in office. Obama’s approval rating did not increase significantly in response to a number of events between 2010 and 2015 that arguably could have produced rallies,” said Gallup.
A side effect has been Trump’s unprecedented steadiness in the polls. “Americans’ approval of the job Donald Trump is doing as president has been highly stable, showing less movement than all previous presidents’ ratings during their first two years in office,” said Gallup.
