Donald Trump has always disliked his predecessor as president, Barack Obama, having begun his political career by telling a sustained lie about Obama not being born in the United States.
During Trump’s second term, new polling shows that Trump remains much less popular than his longtime enemy.
According to new polling from Strength in Numbers, G. Elliott Morris’ polling outfit, Obama remains not only the most popular American political figure, but the only major one with an approval rating over 50 percent. The 44th president has a 54 percent approval rating, while several other Democrats are just behind him.
Trump, on the other hand, has an approval rating of just 38 percent, which ties him with his own vice president, JD Vance, one point behind the Republican Party itself.
Per our new polling out today, the most popular politicians in America are…
Barack Obama
Bernie Sanders
Zohran Mamdani
Pete Buttigieg
Jon Ossoff
& Alexandria Ocasio-CortezTrump is tied with Elon Musk and Hakeem Jeffries, Schumer and Carlson in last https://t.co/vGWqUvS0Pk pic.twitter.com/9Zmb1SHxki
— G Elliott Morris (@gelliottmorris) June 29, 2026
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“After Obama comes a tight cluster of Democratic-aligned figures, all above an average rating of 40/100,” Morris writes. “We see Bernie Sanders at a 45, Zohran Mamdani at 44, the Democratic Party itself at 43 (very surprising result, IMO), Pete Buttigieg at 43, Jon Ossoff at 42, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Kamala Harris, and — the lone Republican to crack the top tier — Marco Rubio all at 41.”
The poll uses Morris’ “feeling thermometer” scale, in which respondents are asked to rate political figures on ” a 0-to-100 scale where 100 represents as warm and favorable as possible, and 0 is as cold as can be.”
And that system, at last presently, is not kind to today’s Republicans.
“The bottom of the list is mostly Republican. Tucker Carlson is the single most disliked figure we tested, at 28. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (at 30), Speaker Mike Johnson (33), and Elon Musk (36) all sit near the floor. And Donald, at 38, is tied with his own vice president, JD Vance, and just below the Republican Party as a whole, at 39,” the post says.
Behind Trump are the two major Democratic Congressional leaders, Senate Minority Leader Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), with 30 and 36 percent approval, respectively.
Photo courtesy of the Political Tribune media library.
