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So what explains this lack of movement in recent presidents’ approval ratings?
For starters, Trump is arguably the most polarizing president ever — in his second year in office, an average of 87 percent of Republicans approved of the president while just 8 percent of Democrats did, the widest such gap that Gallup has ever found. But this kind of partisan split was almost as wide under Obama, though not until his final year in office.
As Democrats and Republicans move farther apart politically, the specifics of a president’s job performance may become secondary considerations for voters in forming an opinion of how he’s doing. “People are more likely to judge candidates and policies solely on the basis of their party,” said Christopher Federico, a professor of political psychology at the University of Minnesota. “If everything boils down to party, then there’s less room for other stuff that a president might be held responsible for — like a bad economy or increased casualties in a foreign military engagement — to move that president’s approval around.”
