Trump’s approval rating currently stands at 41 percent in the new poll, a slight uptick from the 39 percent he received in the same poll conducted two weeks ago. The president received his highest coronavirus response approval rating on April 1 at 47 percent.
The president has held onto a disapproval rating among a solid majority of Americans for more than two months, flickering between 57 and 60 percent since the end of April. Trump’s disapproval rating has never fallen below 52 percent since ABC News/Ipsos began the coronavirus-focused poll in mid-March.
Trump is particularly struggling to gain the approval of female voters regarding his handling of the pandemic, with 62 percent of women expressing disapproval. But a majority of male respondents, 54 percent, also say they disapprove of the president’s response to COVID-19, which has led to the deaths of more than 120,000 Americans since March.
As a significant majority of Americans continue to disapprove of his response to the health crisis, the president held his first campaign rally in months in Tulsa, Oklahoma Saturday evening. He declared to his supporters: “We have to get back to business.”
Appearing to rebuff health officials and increasingly critical poll numbers, Trump praised himself during that event and downplayed the effect of the coronavirus as “kung flu.”
Trump had told Axios Friday just prior to the rally that “there was a time when people thought it was worse wearing a mask,” as he urged thousands of campaign rally attendees it would be “very safe” to attend.
Newsweek reached out to the White House for remarks about the president’s ongoing COVID-19 efforts Sunday morning.
According to the latest poll, only six percent of Democrats have offered any approval toward Trump throughout the coronavirus pandemic, with 94 percent of left-leaning respondents disapproving of the job he’s done since March. But among Republicans, 90 percent approve of Trump’s response to COVID-19, with only 10 percent disapproving.
With 135 days until the November 3rd election, the president has been struggling to gain ground in several of the Midwest swing states which led to his 2016 victory over Hillary Clinton.
A Gravis poll also released Saturday found that presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden leads Trump by 16 percentage points among Minnesota voters. The survey of 600 registered voters of all political affiliations showed 57 percent of the state’s residents would vote for Biden if the presidential election were held today, compared to 37 percent in favor of Trump. Ten percent of respondents said they were “uncertain” in Minnesota – a state which Trump narrowly lost by fewer than 2 percentage points in 2016.
