Political Approval

Gallup per-administration averages, 1999 to present

Author

Sam Caldwell

Gallup’s job approval question is the longest continuous polling series of its kind. The numbers below are term-average approval ratings — not snapshot polls. They tell you what percentage of Americans, on average across each president’s entire term, answered “approve” when asked whether they approved of the job the president was doing.

Gallup approval is not available from a free API; the values in gallup_approval.csv are hand-curated from Gallup’s published summaries and updated on demand, not daily. The economic-sentiment portion of this site refreshes daily from FRED; this section does not.

Per-administration average

Horizontal reference line: the average of completed admins’ averages (47.1%).

Range: min to max during each term

Presidents often peak early (honeymoon) or after major rallying events (9/11), and decline late. The bars below show the full min–max range each president traversed, with a dot marking their term-average.

Detailed Gallup table

Sources

Aggregate averages are facts in the Feist v. Rural sense (not copyrightable), but survey methodology and phrasing vary across polling firms. These figures use Gallup’s consistent methodology throughout.