Inside President Trump's approval ratings - He's above 50% in as many states as he's under 40% & his approval rating in Florida:
Bottom Line: As President Trump crossed the six month mark on Thursday, a myriad of stories were written illustrating President Trump's record low approval ratings for the first six months on the job. It's true that in the polling age (which started in the 1930's), Donald Trump sports the lowest average approval ratings of any President. But then again he had the lowest favorable ratings of any major party candidate on Election Day before he easily won the Electoral College and won 30 of the 50 states despite losing the popular vote. So if we've learned nothing else, it's that President Trump is a natural rule breaker and it's overly simplistic to simply say that he has the lowest approval rating of a President after six months and have it really mean that anything has changed since Election Day.
President Trump's appeal to his supporters is the same quality that makes him unpopular with his detractors. There aren't any politically engaged people without an opinion and therefore it wasn't a reasonable expectation that those who held a negative opinion of him on Election Day would decide to change their perspective since his messaging and approach as President has been consistent to what he portrayed on the campaign trail. With that in mind he's as popular in as many states as he's unpopular & because many of the states that he's most unpopular in happen to be among the largest blue states population-wise (California & New York), they tend to skew the overall national picture.
According to Gallup's state by state polling President Trump has averaged an approval rating of 50% or better in 17 states through the first six months of his Presidency. Likewise he's below 40% approval in 17 states. This includes California where his approval rating is only 30% and New York where his approval rating is 31% (the lowest is Massachusetts where it stands at just 26%). This largely is an exacerbation of what's been a growing trend. The bluest states have become extremely blue and skew many of the national polls that can be misleading when attempting to gauge an overall temperature check of the country nationally. As for Florida, we're trending above the national polling average for President Trump but our overall approval rating is negative for him.
Nationally Gallup has polled at an average of 40% for President Trump through the first six months. In Florida, his approval has averaged 42%. That's close to the margin of difference between Florida and the national popular vote totals for the 2016 election. President Trump won 49% of Florida's vote compared to 46.1% nationally. So, in other words, the more things seem to change, the more they're the same. The President's current approval ratings aren't equitable to other Presidents six month in. Trump's been a political "rule-breaker" since he got into the race and he still is today.