The Gallup Presidential Job Approval Center has been conducting the poll since the inauguration of Harry S. Truman in 1945. Trump is the first president whose first job approval rating is below 50 percent, breaking a record of 51 percent set by George H. W. Bush in 1989.
Trump also faces far more opposition coming into office than previous presidents. He has the highest disapproval rating, at 45 percent, while for earlier presidents, the disapproval rarely surpassed an average of 10 percent.
Former US President Barack Obama had a 68-percent approval rating on the first day of his presidency in 2009, while 12 percent of those who participated in the survey disapproved of the job he was doing.
Typically, things get better for an incoming president in the period between Election Day and the Inauguration. Trump's net favorability rating has seen some improvement, as it rose from a —13-percentage point in Gallup's first poll after the election, to a current zero.
While most US presidents ended their administration with lower overall approval than when they started, Republicans Reagan and the senior Bush left office having improved on their starting point.
Gallup's approval rating is based on telephone interviews with approximately 1,500 adults, with a margin of error of ±3 percentage points.
