By Katie Davis P resident-Elect Donald Trump’s inauguration is just a few weeks away, when Trump will be sworn in as the 45th President of the United States on the steps of the U.S Capital on Friday, January 20th. This will be a great moment for President-elect Donald Trump, his family and his supports. But it goes without saying that President Trump is going to have his hands full given the results of a recent Gallup survey which shows that the President is going to take office in a historically weak position. The Gallup survey, which polled 1028 adults between December 7th and 11th, shows that less than half of people in the U.S., 46 percent, said they are confident in the new President’s ability to handle an international crisis. With 47 percent saying they were confident in his ability to use military force wisely. With 44 percent saying they were confident in President-Elect Donald Trump’s ability to prevent major scandals in his administration. So what do these numbers tell us? Well first of all that the new President will have a lot of work to do to increase his approval rates in the first days of office. Looking at survey results for the same questions asked regarding the past three Presidents it is easy to see that confidence levels are at a historically low level for an incoming President. When President Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton were coming into office over 70 percent of the people surveyed were confident in the President’s abilities. Additional Gallup survey results show that 60 percent of those surveyed were confident that President-elect Donald Trump could work with the GOP-controlled Congress effectively and 59 percent saying that Trump will be able to handle the economy effectively. Unfortunately, for President-elect Donald Trump, his predecessors all received higher survey results in those areas, too.
One thing that we do know about President-Elect Donald Trump as was seen in the election itself is his ability to overcome survey numbers, and we must remember after all that survey numbers are just that, numbers.
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SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE • FEBRUARY 2017
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