thehill.com
The number of voters who approve of President Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic continues to slide, a new Hill-HarrisX poll finds.
Forty-two percent of registered voters in the July 7-10 survey say they approve of Trump’s job on COVID-19, while 58 percent say they disapprove, a 1 percentage point increase from the June 22-23 survey.
The record low approval comes as coronavirus cases continue to surge across the country.
The survey found increasingly negative views among Republican and independent voters.
The number of Republican voters who said they approve of the president’s handling of COVID-19 dropped from a high of 86 percent in March to 76 percent in the July 7-10 poll.
The number of independent voters who approve of Trump’s job on the coronavirus fell from a high of 55 percent in March to 40 percent in this most recent survey.
“When a quarter of your own party doesn’t approve of the way you’re handling an issue it really suggests there’s a challenge for you,” John Sides, political science professor at Vanderbilt University, told Hill.TV.
“You’ve lose the people that would otherwise approve of you or rationalize away any potential shortcomings,” Sides added.
The Hill-HarrisX poll was conducted online among 2,841 registered voters between July 7 and 10. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 1.9 percentage points.