Trump’s job approval ticks up 2 points: Gallup

President Trump’s average approval rating jumped in the first months of 2019 after the end of January’s partial government shutdown, according to a Gallup poll released Tuesday.

Gallup announced Tuesday that the average of several polls showed the president’s approval rating for the first quarter of 2019 to be 41.6 percent, following a surge in support surrounding improved economic numbers in February and another earlier this month following Attorney General William Barr’s summary of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

{mosads}The average is 2 percentage points better than Trump’s average approval rating for the quarter ending Jan. 19, and is just a few points shy of his highest-recorded average quarterly approval rating. He began the quarter with a 37 percent approval rating in mid-January, according to past Gallup surveys.

Trump’s lowest approval ratings during the quarter came in March, according to Gallup, following his former attorney Michael Cohen’s public testimony before Congress and a congressional resolution blocking his order to declare a national emergency along the southern border, which he vetoed.

The quarter is Trump’s ninth in office, and while his average approval rating is near the highest of his presidency, it still trails behind the ninth-quarter averages of past presidents including both former Presidents Obama and Clinton.

Gallup noted that some presidents including former President Reagan, who suffered a 38 percent average approval rating during the ninth quarter of his presidency, successfully won reelection despite poor performances at this relative time during their first terms.

The ninth quarter of Trump’s presidency ended April 20, and could precede trouble for the president following the release of Mueller’s full redacted report on his investigation, which occurred last Thursday and coincided with a 3 percent drop in Trump’s approval rating in a Reuters tracking poll.

Fifty percent of U.S. adults polled said they believe that “Trump or someone from his campaign worked with Russia to influence the 2016 election,” while 58 percent surveyed said they thought Trump “tried to stop investigations into Russian influence on his administration,” according to the Reuters poll.