In his first term of office Donald Trump achieved the lowest average job approval ratings (41%) among Americans since the end of the second world war. In his second term he has fallen well below that with an approval rating of only 35% in a recent Economist/YouGov poll.

Much of this can be explained by voter perceptions of the state of the US economy. The chart below shows the relationship between the percentage of Americans who approve of the president’s handling of his job and consumer confidence. It covers almost 50 years of monthly data with the consumer confidence data coming from surveys conducted at the University of Michigan.

Presidential approval and consumer confidence in the US, 1978 to 2026

The two series track each other closely and so demonstrate a moderately strong relationship with a correlation of 0.44 (If they were unrelated the correlation would be 0 and if they were exactly the same it would be 1). In both cases higher scores denote greater approval and increasing consumer confidence. This confirms the well-known fact that the state of the economy is a big driver of presidential approval.

If we look closely at the consumer confidence index, the average score........

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