President Donald Trump is ending his first year in office with the lowest average approval rating of any elected president in his first term.
According to polling by Gallup, Trump has averaged just a 39 percent approval rating since his inauguration. The previous low was held by Bill Clinton, whose first-year average stood 10 points higher than Trump's, at 49 percent.
Recent surveys show most Americans view Trump as a divisive figure and even question his fitness for office. One relative bright spot for Trump is his handling of the economy, though even there his ratings are not as high as might be expected given a relatively strong economy.
Trump's current approval rating in Gallup's weekly poll is comparable to his average rating, standing at just 38 percent, with 57 percent saying they disapprove.
The persistence of Trump's first-year blues is unprecedented for a president so early in his term. Americans usually give their new presidents the benefit of the doubt, but Trump's "honeymoon period," to the extent he had one, saw his approval rating only as high as 45 percent.
Since then, Trump has spent more time under 40 percent than any other first-year president.
The same poll found that most voters overall find Trump to be intelligent and a strong person.
And positive ratings for Trump's handling of the economy have tended to run higher than his overall job ratings.
In a December poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, Trump's rating on handling the economy was 8 percentage points higher than his overall approval, though even that stood at just 40 percent in the survey, which was a particularly negative one for Trump.
In the Quinnipiac poll, voters were more likely to say Trump is helping the economy than hurting it, 37 percent to 29 percent. On the other hand, more said President Barack Obama deserves the credit than Trump does, 49 percent to 40 percent.
