Did Trump leave the country better off? More voters think so now than in 2020, poll says

Voter opinions of Donald Trump’s presidency have improved since he left the White House, continuing a long-established trend of ex-presidents seeing a boost in their approval ratings, according to a new poll.

Americans now view Trump’s first term — and his handling of specific issues like the economy and crime — more favorably than in 2020, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll released on April 13.

The poll, conducted between April 7 and 11, surveyed 1,059 voters nationwide and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points.

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Nearly half of registered voters, 48%, said Trump left the country better off than when he assumed office, while 46% said it was worse off.

In a similar survey conducted in October 2020, 39% of voters said the U.S. was better off than it was four years ago, marking a change of 9 percentage points.

On the economy, the majority of voters, 64%, said in the recent poll that they either strongly or somewhat approve of Trump’s handling of the issue during his time as president. In a September 2020 poll, 54% of voters said they approved, marking a difference of 10 percentage points.

Trump’s approval rating on law and order has also shot up. In the recent poll, 51% said they approved his handling of the issue, while 44% said the same in 2020, signifying a change of 7 percentage points.

On some other issues, Trump’s approval rating ticked up to a lesser degree.

Thirty-eight percent of respondents approved of Trump’s handling of unifying America, according to the latest poll, while 34% said the same in 2020.

Similarly, 43% of voters approved of Trump’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the recent poll, while 41% approved in 2020.

This boost in Trump’s approval rating is in line with a longstanding trend for former presidents, according to Gallup.

In a July survey by the polling organization, the retrospective approval ratings of nearly every recent president sampled were higher than their average approval rating in office.

John F. Kennedy, for example, had an average approval rating of 70% during his time in office, while his retrospective rating was 90%.

Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Trump all experienced smaller boosts in their approvals after leaving office.

Richard Nixon was the only president to see his post-presidency approval rating drop, according to the poll.

“You kind of move, as an ex-president, from being a political figure to someone who is above the fray,” Jeff Jones, a senior editor at Gallup, told The New York Times.

Presidents also tend to be remembered more for their positive contributions than their negative ones, Jones told the outlet.

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