President Donald Trump and his administration have been criticized by the media and Congressional Democrats throughout the first six weeks of his presidency, but new poll numbers show that registered voters have a more favorable opinion of him than his former opponent, Hillary Clinton.
A Suffolk University poll shows that Trump's favorability beats Clinton's by 20 points. Trump has a 55 percent favorable opinion among registered voters, compared to Clinton's 35 percent favorable opinion, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday.
The same poll, meanwhile, shows Trump — for the first time ever — in significantly better shape than Clinton: 45 percent favorable and 47 percent unfavorable.
Even as Trump beat Clinton in the 2016 election, his image numbers were often worse than hers, and he, of course, wound up losing the popular vote, 48 percent to 46 percent.
A couple of polls toward the end of the 2016 race showed Clinton in territory similar to where she is in the new poll, but Suffolk's own polling at the time showed her in relatively good shape: 46 percent favorable vs. 47 percent unfavorable. This is also the first public poll testing views of her since December — when her loss was fresher in people's minds and Trump hadn't yet assumed the presidency. And, if anything, Clinton's poll numbers have gotten worse over that span.
Clinton's diminishing favorability numbers is a result of Democrats' and Independents' abating affection for her since the end of the 2016 election. 88 percent of Democrats and 32 percent of Independents liked her last October, but the numbers have gone down to 74 percent and 25 percent, respectively.
Clinton recently emerged from her private life on Wednesday night to deliver a speech at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. honoring International Women's Day, after the poll came out.