PoliZette Voter Optimism Under Trump Tops Entire Obama Presidency Poll finds number of Americans who say U.S. on 'right track' remains highest in years

The number of Americans who say the country is “going in the right direction” stands at 42 percent — marking the longest streak of optimism among voters since the question was first asked in November 2008, according to a tracking poll released by Rasmussen Reports on Monday.

One week after Donald Trump’s inauguration as president, survey respondents who say the U.S. is looking up shot to 47 percent — an all-time high in the poll — and though it went down in February slightly to 46 and 45 and then in March to 40, 38, and then 35, it has since ticked back up to 36, 41, and now 42.

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It’s a sharp contrast to the Obama years, when the percentage of people who said the country was “going in the right direction” was usually in the 20s, and sometimes much worse.

For most of the second half of 2011, the number was in the teens — with just 15 to 18 percent of likely voters telling Rasmussen that they thought the country was going in the right direction. The very lowest ratings in that year came during one week in July and another in August, when just 14 percent of people said the country was going in the right direction.

Under Obama, the last time the “going in the right direction” number was over 40 percent were the four weeks of November 2012, during and after his re-election as president, when the number was 43, and then 42 and 41.

But it didn’t stick. By the start of Obama’s second term in January 2013, it was back in the 20s and never returned to the 40s.

Only one other time during Obama’s presidency — for one week in May of 2009 — was the right-direction number in the 40s.

For almost all of 2013, 2014 and 2015, the number remained in the 20s and low to mid 30s. In the last five months of 2015, the number stayed in the 20s.

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In the first 13 weeks of Trump’s presidency, an average of 42 percent of likely voters said the country is “going in the right direction.” This is ten points higher than the 13-week average in the first 13 weeks of President Barack Obama’s first term in 2009, when just 32 percent of likely voters said the country was “going in the right direction” — despite euphoric coverage by the media of the election and inauguration of the first African-American as president of the United States.

The most recent Rasmussen tracking poll, released Monday, reflected the average percentage of likely voters who answered “right direction” over five days, April 16-20. A total of 2,500 likely voters were surveyed using an automated call system.

The exact wording of the question was:

“Generally speaking, do you feel things in this country are going in the right direction, or have they gotten off on the wrong track?”

The Rasmussen Reports poll is not the only survey, however, that shows a significant change in the percentage of Americans who say they think the country’s going in the right direction since Trump was elected.

In the IBD/TIPP poll at the end of January, more people said the country was going in the right direction, 48.7 percent, than they had since 2005, during President George W. Bush’s second term, according to the polling company.

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The most recent IBD/TIPP poll showed a lower number, 38.8 percent, but it was taken March 24-30 and so does not reflect the bump-up in polls that followed the Syria missile strike on April 7 and the confirmation and swearing-in of Neil Gorsuch as Supreme Court justice. And it was still high compared to 2016, when Obama was president, when it dipped below 35 percent twice. It approached 40 percent only in the last month of 2016, in the poll taken following the election of Donald Trump, when 39.8 percent of people polled said they thought the country was going in the right direction.

A closer look at the line graphs that accompanied the IBD/TIPP polls, produced by Investor’s Business Daily and TechnoMetrica, reveals that the numbers on the Direction of the Country question have been so much higher under Trump than under Obama that the pollsters had to adjust the y-axis on the line graph to show a higher number.

The graph below, for all of 2016, shows a top number of 40 on the y-axis:

The below graph, meanwhile — the latest — shows a top number of 60 on the y-axis:

The graph above appears on the Investor’s Business Daily website, and appears to show that the Direction of the Country was above 40 and 50 in 2016, when other graphs from prior months, like the one below, seem to show it was in the 30s for all of 2016.

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Terry Jones, the commentary editor for Investor’s Business Daily, told LifeZette it appears that someone used the wrong set of numbers on the graph. He confirmed that the Direction of the Country numbers in 2016 remained in the 30s — “basically, a flat reading,” he said, “they didn’t change much.”

IBD/TIPP has been asking the Direction of the County question since February of 2001, he said.

Early in the 2000s, during President George. W. Bush’s first term, it was in the 50s, 60s and 70s. It started declining in Bush’s second term, and hit a low of 17 in October of 2008, after the financial crash.

“Since then it’s moved up, but it never got back to the 50 level,” he said.

Trump’s 48.7 percent in February was the closest.

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The average percentage of Americans who said the country was headed in the right direction during the Obama years was 36.9. The average during Trump’s first 13 weeks in the IBD/TIPP poll is 42 percent.