Polling: Americans dissatisfied with the state of the union ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

WASHINGTON >> The turbulence of impeachment, a contentious presidential campaign and a global virus health threat confront President Donald Trump as he prepares to deliver his State of the Union address Tuesday night. But one thing about the Trump era has remained remarkably steady: public opinion on the president.

Approval of Trump has stayed persistently in negative territory, and the country is more polarized now than it has been under any other president in recent history. Polls also show Americans express significant dissatisfaction with the direction of the country and even more so with the state of politics.

Even with those downbeat numbers, Americans have largely positive views of both the economy and how Trump is handling it.

A look at public opinion on the president and the state of the union.

Trump is just the third president in U.S. history to be impeached by the House of Representatives. The Republican-controlled Senate, which is conducting the trial, narrowly rejected Democratic demands Friday to summon witnesses, all but ensuring Trump’s acquittal. Final voting on his fate is scheduled for Wednesday, on the heels of Trump’s primetime speech the night before.

Impeachment proceedings have closely split the public. In a January poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, slightly more said the Senate should vote to convict Trump and remove him from office than said it should not, 45% to 40%. An additional 14% of those questioned said they did not know enough to have an opinion.

In the survey, 42% of Americans said they thought Trump did something illegal in his July telephone call with the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, and an additional 32% said he did something unethical.

A slim majority of Republicans, 54%, thought Trump did nothing wrong with Ukraine’s leader, but that share declined slightly from 64% in October. Roughly one-third of respondents said they think Trump did something unethical but not illegal, and just about 1 in 10 that he did something illegal.