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(ANTIMEDIA) — As one recent poll shows that Donald Trump has the lowest first-year job approval rating of any elected president in U.S. history, another suggests that former president George W. Bush’s popularity has nearly doubled since leaving office in 2009.
According to a CNN poll conducted by the report-generating software SSRS, 61 percent of Americans polled now view Bush favorably compared with just 33 percent during his last year in the White House.
Much of the 43rd U.S. president’s ratings climb can be attributed to shifting views among Democrats and independents. In 2009, for instance, just 11 percent of Democrats looked upon Bush favorably. Now, that figure stands at a 54 percent majority.
In fact, Bush now holds a majority favorable rating among every demographic but liberals, the poll shows. Within that group, 43 percent approve of the former president while 48 percent still harbor an “unfavorable opinion” of the man.
Republicans, by contrast, regard Bush in virtually the same light as they did after he left office. At that time, 76 percent of Republicans polled approved of the outgoing president. That number spiked to 88 percent in a 2015 poll but has now shrunk back to 76 percent in the days of the Trump administration.
As for the current president, a Gallup poll published Monday revealed Trump’s 38 percent approval rating for his first year in office is more than 10 percentage points lower than any other U.S. president’s first-year average.
All this comes within the context of a separate Gallup poll, published last week, which shows global confidence in U.S. leadership has fallen to a new low of just 30 percent. That’s one percentage point below China and just three points ahead of Russia.