Barack Obama · Deep dive

Standing

40the lowest reading in eight years

Touched twelve times across 418 seven-day averages, and never passed.

How was he regarded, measured over time? Across 418 Gallup readings spanning both terms, approval never fell below 40, touching that floor twelve times without passing it. This page used to call it the highest floor of the six presidencies here; that comparison was withdrawn in August 2026, because four of the six were measured with single polls and this series with seven-day rolling averages, which cannot reach as low. The floor stands as a fact about the series. The ranking does not, and the one presidency measured the same way is the only one it is now set against.

Six of six — the base set is complete

Every subject at this tier is asked the same six questions, fixed before the subject is chosen so the set cannot be picked to suit an argument. The others written for this record are Private Money, The Output, Reach, Affiliations and The Legal Record. With this one the base set is complete, so the overlay dives — the ones specific to what this subject has been — are unblocked. None of them could have been started before now.

The same question is answered for Donald Trump, from the same archive, and the two findings are mirror images.

Back to the full record.

the lowest reading in eight years

Touched twelve times across 418 readings, never passed

418

Gallup readings

52.3 a year, every one a seven-day average

points between best and worst

Compared only with the one presidency measured the same way

the highest reading

Below Clinton at 73 and both Bushes above 89

4 of 6

presidencies here measured a different way

Single polls against this series’ seven-day averages

Best and worst reading, six presidencies

A floor of 40 across 418 readings — and four rows it cannot be ranked against

Read the two columns apart. They say different things, and a mean would hide both. Read the last column too: it is the one this table lacked until August 2026, and it is the reason the floor is no longer called the highest of the six.

President	Lowest reading	Highest reading	Spread	Mean	Collected as
Reagan	35	68	33	52.2	single polls
G.H.W. Bush	29	89	60	61.4	single polls
Clinton	37	73	36	55.5	single polls
G.W. Bush	25	90	65	51.3	single polls
Obama	40	67	27	48.0	7-day averages
Trump 45	34	49	15	40.4	7-day averages

Biden and the current term are not in this table. The archive PAGE lists fourteen presidencies and neither is among them; the workbook behind it does carry an unlinked Biden tab, but it holds thirteen readings that stop in January 2022 — the first year of a four-year term, with a mean of 49.5 against 42.5 for the full published series. Using it would have been worse than leaving the row out. The Standing dive on that record takes Gallup’s own table instead, and says so.

The last column is the one this table lacked until 11 August 2026. Sort by spread and you sort by it: every single-poll presidency ranges 33 to 65, both averaged presidencies 27 and 15. A seven-day average blends a week of interviews and cannot print the high or the low that one poll can, so the two groups are not comparable on any extreme.

Reading it

The floor is 40 and the ceiling 67 across 418 readings. Both are facts about this series. What this page used to add — that the floor is the highest of the six — has been withdrawn: four of the six were measured with single polls, which reach lower than a seven-day average by construction. The one presidency measured the same way is Trump 45, which floors at 35 against this 40 and ranges 10 against this 27. That comparison stands. The others are shown with their instrument beside them and are not ranked against this one.

The floor is not one stray point

The series touches 40 twelve times and never goes under. The first is in August 2011, during the debt-ceiling standoff; the last is the weekend before the 2014 midterms. Thirty of the 418 readings sit at 41 or below, so the floor is not one stray point — it is a level the series returned to and stopped at repeatedly across three years.

Read 2026-08-11. This dive belongs to the record it sits inside, and it completes that record’s base set. How opinion divides by party as a subject in its own right is owned by Political Polarization.