Curious. What's the lowest approval % for any prez in history?

[Maddy McCall]

I'm an historian, but I don't know this answer. Can anyone tell me, since this kind of polling has been done, what is the lowest percentage of presidential approval in history?

Bush is at 45% right now. That's bad.

[SaveElmer]

1. Truman or Carter

Right before they left office...can't remember which was worse

[underpants]

7. Worse than Nixon at his end?

Really?

[cestpaspossible]

2. I think Nixon was in the high twenties when he resigned.

That's probably the floor as far as polling goes...

[JI7]

3. Pappy Bush's went into the 30's

which stayed through election time in 1992.

but if you mean for a previous president at a similar point in time (second term in first few months) then i think Chimp's might be lowest.

[Oreo]

4. He's got the lowest ever for 2nd term

I'm looking to see if I can find the lowest ever.

[fryguy]

5. William Henry Harrison sure wasn't liked very much

but not sure what his approval rating was when he died a month after taking the oath of office . . .

:sarcasm:

[Maddy McCall]

6. I don't think that they did this kind of polling then...

but I agree...not many people liked him. :D

[cestpaspossible]

8. Truman's low of 22 beats Nixon's low of 23

Here is the definitive webpage for answering your question:


http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/cgi-bin/hsrun.exe/Roperweb/PresJob/PresJob.htx;start=HS_index

DU software makes posting the actual link impossible; use the link above but manually type in

;start=HS_index


after the url.

[JI7]

10. why was Truman so low ?

[cestpaspossible]

11. Now you've made me want to go out and get that Truman biography

that everyone was reading a while back.... because I don't know the answer to your question.

[ieoeja]

13. Korea

He started the Cold War with our defense of South Korea. Not five years after the end of World War II, the American public wasn't too hot on the idea of jumping right back into a war.

On top of that he had to conceal the truth concerning our retreat from North Korea. He couldn't very well tell the world that a rogue general told UN forces to run away as he tried launching atomic weapons. Instead he had to stand by and let that same general blame his failures and firing on Truman's "weakness" and "politics".

Thankfully, this was in the days when Conservatives and Republicans traditionally opposed all wars, so they rejected war-mongering MacArthur in their primary in favor of the very man who first suggested his firing: Eisenhower.

[R. A. Fuqua]

9. I don't know for sure

but it seems that I learned in a college poly sci class that polling methods changed sometime in the 1960s--since then the results are more "scientific" (?).

So only the polls from the last 40 years or so can really be compared.

(so we don't have good data for how people felt about Hoover for example. but at least we can use Nixon as a bench mark for low approval...)

[LTRS]

12. it was the advent of the phone

... that changed polling data. They were able to reach more people more quickly and the higher sample size made the polls more accurate.

I think Bush daddy had a 28% right before leaving office. Jr's is the worst for a president this new into a 2nd term. He has a long way to go down, and I'm sure he will. Unless he eff's up and let's another terrorist attack happen. Then, given the mentality of the American public, he will automatically become a hero again (for some odd reason).

My favorite "poll" number was the one that came out a few weeks ago that showed that only 40% of the American public even know which party holds the majority in congress. How effin' stupid can you get?

[Pepperbelly]

14. Nixon and Truman both tanked pretty badly ... nt