President Obama entered office with one of the highest approval ratings for a new president at 69 percent, but he left the White House with one of the worst average approval ratings in modern American history at 47.9 percent, according to a recent Gallup poll.
Only Gerald Ford, Harry Truman, and Jimmy Carter left office with lower average approval ratings, leaving Obama behind Richard Nixon (49 percent) and Bill Clinton (55.1 percent), who were both embroiled in infamous scandals that initiated impeachment proceedings. George W. Bush, Obama's predecessor, left office with two land wars in his wake and a 49.4 percent average approval rating, almost two points higher than Obama's.
Obama's average rating may have been low, but his final approval rating was high at 59 percent, equaling Dwight Eisenhower and pulling just ahead of Kennedy (58 percent). Only Clinton (66 percent) and Ronald Reagan (63 percent) held higher scores in Gallup's most recent update of their ratings.
Obama's ratings were affected by various events that occurred while he held office. His average job approval ratings were nearly equal during both of his terms, at 49.1 percent in his first term and 46.7 percent in his second.
The lowest approval ratings of his presidency were when they dipped to 38 percent. In August and October 2011, Obama reached this low point after tough negotiations to raise the federal debt ceiling caused a stock market dive after Standard and Poor's downgraded the U.S. credit rating, and virtually no new net jobs were created, according to government reports.
When the Islamic State released videos beheading American journalists in September 2014–along with poor relations between Ukraine and Russia, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the domestic racial tensions rising from the killings of Eric Gardner and Michael Brown by white police officers–Obama's rating fell to 38 percent again.
Except for Eisenhower and Kennedy, all other presidents saw their approval ratings drop below 38 percent, with five going below 30 percent, Gallup reported.