States Where Trump's Approval Rating Is Highest, Lowest

With President Donald Trump’s first term as president at its midway point, the latest data from MorningConsult suggests the country is still deeply divided geographically over the way Trump is running the country.

According to FiveThirtyEight, Trump’s national approval rating stands at just 41.3 percent, down from 45.5 percent when he took office in January 2017. Trump’s national approval rating of 41.3 percent is well below the approval ratings of both President Barack Obama (46.6 percent) and President George W. Bush (61 percent) at the same points in their first terms in office.

Trump's Strongest, Weakest States 

The disappointing overall approval rating doesn’t tell the full story. Trump’s approval rating remains at or above 50 percent in 16 U.S. states. Here are the states where Trump is most popular, according to MorningConsult:

• Wyoming: 64 percent approval. 
• West Virgina: 61 percent.
• Alabama: 58 percent.
• Mississippi: 56 percent.
• Tennessee: 56 percent.

Even among the states that approve of Trump the most, the sentiment is falling. Trump’s approval has dropped by at least 4 percent in the past two years in three of those five states.

The love for Trump is certainly not shared nationwide. Trump’s approval ratings are lowest in these five states:

• California: 33 percent.
• Massachusetts: 33 percent.
• Vermont: 33 percent.
• Hawaii: 34 percent.
• Maryland: 34 percent.

Re-Election Odds

While Trump’s staunchest supporters in the Midwest and South and his most vocal critics on the coasts dig in their heels, online prediction website PredictIt said Trump’s chances of winning the 2020 election are falling right along with his approval ratings. PredictIt’s current offer prices suggest Trump has a 32-percent chance of being re-elected in 2020. While he has a wide lead over nearest contender Democrat Beto O’Rourke (16 percent), the PredictIt number suggests Trump has less than a 1-in-3 chance of a second term, down from a 39-percent chance just three months ago.

In addition to O’Rourke, PredictIt indicates Democrats Joe Biden (13 percent) and Kamala Harris (11 percent) are the other top 2020 election hopefuls. Vice President Mike Pence is the leading Republican alternative to Trump, with only a 3-percent chance of winning the 2020 election.

Not So Fast

Unfortunately, polls and online gambling sites don’t have the best track record when it comes to predicting election outcomes. Some popular gambling sites had the odds of a Trump victory in 2016 at about 5-to-1 on Election Night.

Love him or hate him, American investors have largely been satisfied with the impact the Trump presidency has had on the stock market up to this point: since Election Day 2016, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust SPY is up 19.7 percent overall.

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White House photo by Joyce N. Boghosian.