Trump ends the year with less approval than Biden despite the great economic news of recent days

No matter how much the president strives to attribute to their tariffs all the benefits of macroeconomic results, The truth is that the electorate continues to show reluctance with this and other measures.

According to the weighted average of Nate Silver, former head of the 538 portal and one of the most respected data analysts in the country, less than 40% of Americans support his economic policy and commerce, while almost 60% express their rejection.

Those numbers are likely to change when they are averaged over more recent surveys… but it’s also likely that the numbers won’t be as good when the results are recorded. effects of the federal government shutdown throughout the month of October and the first twelve days of November.

Much of this difference between general data and personal perception lies, as happens in many other Western countries, in the fact that These improvements do not completely affect the purchasing power of Americans.

He unemployment It rose in November to 4.6%, a figure that would dazzle in other places, but which is the highest in the United States since September 2021, that is, in full recovery after the COVID-19 pandemic. Salaries, however, continue to rise at a good pace: from January to November 2025, workers earned an average of one dollar more per week: from 30.8 to 31.76.

The difficult comparison with Biden

Joe Biden he encountered a similar problem during his tenure. The macroeconomic figures were spectacular, although inflated by the logical rebound after the pandemic. Howeverhis so-called “Bidenomics” did not have popular support, because they were not noticeable in the daily life of the average citizen.

Thus, inflation and the resulting inability to fill the shopping bag or acquire a home at a reasonable price were a burden on his candidacy and, later, that of his vice president. Kamala Harris.

Even so, and within what was a quite unpopular legislature due to the polarized political environment in the United States, Biden ended his first year in office with 42% approval and 52.6% rejection, for a negative index of more than ten points. donald Trump is on track to break that record -no other president comes close to those figures in the first 365 days of their mandates- with a negative index that is currently at 12.5 points.

One of the factors to take into account, without a doubt, is that, strictly speaking, this is Trump’s second term, although it is not consecutive. The Second terms are always tougher in terms of popularity: Voters get tired of the same face and begin to see only the negative of their policies compared to the enthusiasm that the new candidates begin to cause.

All in all, it is shocking that Trump began this term with a positive balance of 11.6 points. That means that its popularity has dropped by 24.1 points over these eleven months.

Of course, its final assessment will depend a lot on its ability to redirect the economy in a way that truly affects citizens, but there are many other aspects that have influenced its demographic erosion.

From the Epstein case to the betrayal of America First

Beyond the aforementioned partisan disputes, the fact that the United States is divided into two practically irreconcilable sides and that the figure of Trump himself does not invite harmony, there are objective issues that explain the current president’s low popularity.

First of all, its mentioned dark clouds in personal perception of the economy. There are no longer so many experts who point to a recession, but there is still an open debate about the medium-term usefulness of tariffs.

In second place, has not been entirely clear with its America First base. The image he gave in the pre-campaign was that of a man dedicated to his country and who was going to ignore everything that happened outside of it unless it could benefit his citizens.

The reality has been the opposite: Trump went to war with Iran, spent a lot of time trying to solve the Gaza warcontinues sending emissaries back and forth to Russia and Ukraine, threatens Venezuela…and he never stops bragging about the number of wars he has stopped, with a thinly concealed obsession with the Nobel Peace Prize.

A third factor would be Epstein case. Curiously, not so much the friendly relationship that united the two for years and the abundance of documents that link them, but the refusal of their Administration to publish all the information they have about the pedophile.

Trump pledged during the campaign to get the whole truth out and accused the Democrats of trying to cover it up as if he himself had not been the active president when Epstein was arrested for the second time and was found dead in his cell a few days later.

This coming and going of the Department of Justice, led by Pam Bondi, and the feeling that Congress, including the Republicans themselves, have had to go begging for information and extracting it almost by force, has not benefited Trump’s image at all: not so much because it was believed that he had something personal to hide, we must insist on this, but because Epstein’s is a cause of a good part of his voters since the times of QAnon and they trusted him to see justice done. These types of disappointments end up paying dearly.