Two-thirds of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of coronavirus: poll

Two-thirds of Americans disapprove of how President Trump has handled the coronavirus pandemic, the latest ABC-Ipsos poll reveals.

In the poll, 67 percent of respondents said that they disapproved of how the president has handled the pandemic, which has killed more than 130,000 people in the country, while 33 percent said that they approved of Trump’s performance.

It’s the highest level of dissatisfaction with the president’s response to COVID-19 since the pandemic began.

Until now, Trump’s approval rating had mainly hovered in the low to mid-40s. The previous iteration of the poll, conducted June 17-18, had his approval rating at 41 percent.

Since then, however, the U.S. has experienced a resurgence of the virus, with multiple states having to reimpose economic restrictions such as the re-shuttering of bars in an attempt to slow the spread of the disease.

The eight percent drop in Trump’s approval rating can in part be attributed to his falling stock among independent voters. In the mid-June poll, the president’s approval rating among independents was 40 percent; now it’s at 29 percent. Conversely, his disapproval among the pivotal voting bloc went from 59 percent to 73 percent.

Support from Trump’s own Republican base also diminished, with approval of the president’s pandemic performance going from 90 percent to 78 percent.

The poll was conducted July 8-9, surveying 711 adults with a margin of error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.