Daily Presidential Tracking Poll

Wednesday, March 15, 2017

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Wednesday shows that 45% of Likely U.S. Voters approve of President Trump’s job performance. Fifty-four percent (54%) disapprove.

The latest figures include 28% who Strongly Approve of the way Trump is performing and 44% who Strongly Disapprove. This gives him a Presidential Approval Index rating of -16. (see trends).

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

Surprise, surprise. After months of media and Democratic charges that Trump paid no taxes, a leaked copy of his 2005 tax return shows that he paid 25% of his income in taxes, compared to the 19% paid most recently by former President Obama. But even during the presidential campaign at the height of the false tax allegations against Trump, 85% of voters said a candidate’s policy positions are more important than the amount of taxes he or she has paid.

The United States has the highest corporate tax rate in the industrial world, and the president wants to cut it dramatically. We’ll tell you at 10:30 what voters think about reducing the corporate tax rate.

With the cost to taxpayers steadily climbing, House Republicans have proposed replacing Obamacare’s subsidies to help lower-income Americans buy health insurance with tax credits. Voters are closely divided over whether that’s a good plan, with the usual wide partisan division of opinion.

The president’s shocking claim that Obama had the "wires tapped" at Trump Tower during the heated presidential campaign has once again raised questions about the secret - and potentially illegal political - operations of U.S. intelligence agencies. 

Forty-seven percent (47%) of voters believe America’s intelligence agencies have their own political agenda.

(More below)

Arnold Schwarzenegger has refuted reports that he is considering a run for the U.S. Senate, and voters are glad to hear it.

Rumors also have been circulating for weeks that Hillary Clinton is eyeing a New York City mayoral bid, but only 23% of voters think the failed 2016 Democratic presidential candidate should run for mayor.

Pope Francis in an interview last week indicated that he is open to the idea of married men becoming priests in order to combat the Catholic Church’s shortage of clergy, and most American Catholics approve.

(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.