Trump has gotten a lot of bad polling news recently, as
his approval ratings have cratered and his general election opponent
Joe Biden has widened his lead over the incumbent. A new Yahoo! News/YouGov
poll is arguably worse news for Trump, as the results cut at his character and place in American history.
When directly asked “Do you think that President Trump is a racist?”, 52 percent said yes, while only 34 percent said no — an 18 point spread. Even a hefty plurality of white voters agreed Trump is a racist, 46-39, while only 14 percent of Republicans said yes to the question. Crucially, among independent voters, the spread was even wider than the overall number, with 53 percent saying Trump is a racist and only 31 percent saying he is not.
Respondents were also asked “How would you rate the following Presidents?”, and given choices ranging from “Great” to “failure” in assessing Trump and former Presidents
Barack Obama,
Abraham Lincoln,
George Washington,
George W. Bush,
Bill Clinton,
Ronald Reagan,
Jimmy Carter,
John F. Kennedy,
Dwight Eisenhower, and
Franklin Roosevelt.
It did not go well for Trump. A whopping 54 percent rated Trump either a “failure” or “below average,” with the results overwhelmingly tilted to “failure” at 43 percent. That’s more than double the number who said the same of President Obama, whose polarizing presidency scored 21 percent in that metric. That’s versus 45 percent who said Obama was “great” or “near great.”
In fact, Trump was seen as a failure by more than triple the number of people who said the same of President Bush (13%) and President Carter (12%). As for President Lincoln, to whom Trump has frequently
compared himself, only 2 percent of Americans rated him a failure.
Overall, Biden led Trump by nine points in the poll, 49 percent to 40 percent.