President Donald Trump has begun his first term in the red, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday.
Forty-four percent of respondents to Quinnipiac’s poll disapproved of Trump’s handling of his job as President thus far, while 36 percent approved. Nineteen percent of respondents were undecided.
A press release accompanying the poll noted that 59 percent of respondents approved of former President Barack Obama’s performance in office in their first survey of his presidency, released Mar. 4, 2009. Twenty-five percent of respondents in that poll disapproved of the President’s performance.
Still, 53 percent of respondents were optimistic about the next four years with Trump as president, Quinnipiac reported, while 43 percent were pessimistic.
Quinnipiac surveyed 1,190 voters nationwide from Jan. 20-25, using live interviews on land lines and cell phones. The poll has a margin of error of 2.8 percentage points.