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Pliny's Point on January 20, 2017
January 20, 2017: As Donald Trump is inaugurated president of the United States, Pliny's Point looks at the initial approval ratings of the past five presidents. This is an average of the approval ratings from each former president's first Gallup poll.[1][2]
| Initial presidential approval ratings | ||
|---|---|---|
| President | First poll from Gallup approval rating | Poll end date |
| Barack Obama | 68 percent | January 23, 2009 |
| George W. Bush | 57 percent | February 4, 2001 |
| Bill Clinton | 58 percent | January 26, 1993 |
| George H.W. Bush | 51 percent | January 26, 1989 |
| Ronald Reagan | 51 percent | February 2, 1981 |
| Average: 57 percent | ||
Presidential approval ratings can vary significantly throughout a president's term. Overall average approval ratings from Gallup for previous presidents going back to Harry Truman range from 45 percent to 70 percent.[3]
What's in a name?
Pliny the Elder, a scholar from the Roman Empire, is most well known for writing the encyclopedic work Naturalis Historia, or “Natural History.” His extremely thorough work covered everything from botany to technology. Naturalis Historia, one of the largest Roman works that still exists from the first century A.D., became an example for future encyclopedic works through its formatting, references, and comprehensiveness.
Today, Ballotpedia works to preserve and expand knowledge, just like Pliny did hundreds of years ago. One of the features of Ballotpedia, the encyclopedia of American politics, was a daily statistic called Pliny’s Point. Each day, between January 20, 2017 and September 1, 2017, readers learned where Americans stood on the direction of the country, or their approval of elected officials.
Click here for more Pliny's Point articles.
See also
Ballotpedia daily polling averages:
Stay in the know:
- The Weekly Brew
- The Daily Brew
- You're Hired: Tracking the Trump Administration Transition, 2016-2017
- Policy issues under the Trump administration, 2017-2021
- 115th United States Congress
- Special elections to the 115th United States Congress (2017-2018)
Footnotes
