Daily Presidential Tracking Poll

Friday, August 10, 2018

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Friday shows that 46% of Likely U.S. Voters approve of President Trump’s job performance. Fifty-two percent (52%) disapprove.

The latest figures include 32% who Strongly Approve of the way Trump is performing and 43% who Strongly Disapprove. This gives him a Presidential Approval Index rating of -11. (see trends).

Regular updates are posted Monday through Friday at 9:30 a.m. Eastern (sign up for free daily email update).

Rasmussen Reports invites you to be a part of our first-ever Citizen-Sourced National Midterm Election Polling Project. Learn more about how you can contribute.  

Now that Gallup has quit the field, Rasmussen Reports is the only nationally recognized public opinion firm that still tracks President Trump's job approval ratings on a daily basis. If your organization is interested in a weekly or longer sponsorship of Rasmussen Reports' Daily Presidential Tracking Poll, please send e-mail to  beth@rasmussenreports.com .

The Trump administration announced this week that it will re-impose trade sanctions on Iran that had been previously suspended under the 2015 nuclear agreement, and voters are cautiously optimistic that they will be effective in getting Iran to renegotiate the agreement.  

The administration has also imposed new sanctions on Russia for attempting to assassinate an ex-spy and his daughter living in England, though voters aren’t convinced that those sanctions have worked very well. 

Timed with the release of a Pentagon report, “Final Report on Organizational and Management Structure for the National Security Space Components,” Vice President Mike Pence yesterday outlined U.S. plans for the creation of a national space force that would counter threats mainly from China and Russia.

While just one-in-three voters support the proposal to create a national “Space Force” that would be the sixth branch of the U.S. armed forces, half see space as key to national security.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' rocket company reportedly plans to charge passengers at least $200,000 for its first trips into space next year. But most Americans aren’t interested in taking the trip, even if they could afford the hefty ticket price.

The news that former Trump attorney Michael Cohen recorded conversations with his client and others revealed an ethical lapse decried by other attorney’s as media outlets fed on the recording’s content. We’ll tell you at 10:30 how much trust voters have in lawyers.

(More below)

As economic confidence stays perched among the highest levels in four years of surveying, consumers are ready to open their wallets again, just in time for the back-to-school shopping season. 

With the unemployment rate still among 18-year lows and the Dow Jones Industrial Average still among all-time highs, voters are slowly giving President Trump more credit than President Obama for the improving economy, though there remains a stark partisan divide. However, voters agree that impeaching Trump would be a detriment to the nation’s economy. 

Forty-four percent (44%) of Likely U.S. Voters now think the country is heading in the right direction. 

(More below)

Some readers wonder how we come up with our job approval ratings for the president since they often don’t show as dramatic a change as some other pollsters do. It depends on how you ask the question and whom you ask.

To get a sense of longer-term job approval trends for the president, Rasmussen Reports compiles our tracking data on a full month-by-month basis.

Rasmussen Reports has been a pioneer in the use of automated telephone polling techniques, but many other firms still utilize their own operator-assisted technology (see methodology).

Daily tracking results are collected via telephone surveys of 500 likely voters per night and reported on a three-day rolling average basis. To reach those who have abandoned traditional landline telephones, Rasmussen Reports uses an online survey tool to interview randomly selected participants from a demographically diverse panel. The margin of sampling error for the full sample of 1,500 Likely Voters is +/- 2.5 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Results are also compiled on a full-week basis and crosstabs for full-week results are available for Platinum Members.