Presidents often get boost from strong economy

The stock market has surged. Unemployment is at 4.1 percent. The Islamic State group has largely been vanquished from Iraq and Syria.

But despite it all, President Donald Trump’s approval ratings are mired in the upper 30s. No president has had worse ratings at this stage of his term since modern polling began more than three-quarters of a century ago.

With Trump starting the new year with a blizzard of tweets and fresh controversy seemingly every day, there are still debates about whether he is as weak as he looks. After all, he managed to win the presidency with terrible favorability ratings a little over a year ago. Analysts have understandably been cautious about assuming that his weak ratings will doom him or his party again.

But it seems clear that Trump’s approval ratings betray significant political weakness.

Setting aside the question of how much credit first-year presidents deserve for a strong economy — they have less influence than you might think — Trump’s ratings should be much better. A 4.1 percent unemployment rate, the lowest in 17 years, is more typically associated with a 60-plus-percent approval rating for a first-term president.

Lyndon Johnson is the only other first-term president in the era of modern polling with an approval rating under 50 percent while the jobless rate was below 5 percent. But this came after he’d already been president for about four years (having first finished out John F. Kennedy’s term) and as the Vietnam War began to drag down his presidency.

Trump started in a far worse position than other incoming presidents. His initial approval rating was in the low- to mid40s, while most presidents enter with an approval rating over 60 percent. It was fair to speculate that his approval ratings would gradually rise with the benefit of a strong economy. Perhaps he would even benefit from low expectations, as many suspected he did during the presidential campaign.

But by now the economy would have been expected to lift his approval rating into the 50s, based on an analysis of presidential approval and economic data going back to 1950. This is despite the tendency for presidents’ approval ratings to decline during their time in office. If the economy were to overcome Trump’s unpopularity and send his approval ratings up, you would think we would have started to see signs of it.

It is certainly possible that the economy — or other good news — will still lift his ratings. But it seems just as likely that Trump will continue to feel the burden of his time in office. On average, a first-term president’s approval rating drops by about a point per quarter after controlling for inflation and unemployment (and controlling for the large bump George W. Bush received after the Sept. 11 attacks).

Trump still has some of the advantages that helped him win despite low favorability ratings in 2016. He appears to maintain the support of his base and fairly high levels of Republican unity. Indeed, his favorability ratings are still higher than they were in the weeks heading into the 2016 election, when they were in the mid-30s.