President Donald Trump has the highest disapproval rating on gas prices of any predecessor.
CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten said “no president has been hated more when it comes to gas prices” than Trump, citing an aggregate of polling data that puts the president’s disapproval rating on the issue at 79 percent.
The numbers suggest that rising gas prices—which stood at $4.0776 on Friday, according to AAA—have made Trump more unpopular on the issue than former President Joe Biden, whose disapproval rating stood at 72 percent, Barack Obama, whose disapproval reached 68 percent in 2011, and even George W. Bush in 2006, who reached 75 percent, with Enten noting that gas prices were “quite high back then.”
“Donald Trump takes the cake as these four-dollar-plus gas prices continue to give us pain at the pump,” Enten said.
The disapproval numbers do not come solely from Democrats and independents, but also from voters in the president’s own party—a “very painful” and “rare trifecta” for Trump ahead of the November midterms, according to Enten.
Republican strategists have repeatedly warned that higher prices could damage the party in November. “If Democrats could sustain leads on the economy and win double-digit margins among independents as some polls show, a Blue Wave is possible,” GOP strategist David Winston said.
Meanwhile, as Trump voters break down in tears over an affordability crisis worsened by the Iran war and Republican lawmakers warn that he could become a liability heading into the midterms, the president continues to dismiss any affordability crisis as a “hoax,” while boasting about the strength of the economy under his administration.
In an interview with Punchbowl News published last week, the president suggested that any failure for voters to turn out would reflect frustration with the party—not him—saying, “They’re angry at Republicans, but they’re not angry at me.”
Yet Enten suggested that the American people are “taking their anger out on the president of the United States,” rather than directing it at his party.
The data analyst noted that Trump is receiving “atrocious numbers among the working class,” one of the groups that helped elect him and that Republicans are hoping to win over again in the upcoming midterms.
According to the data, 66 percent of GOP working-class voters—whom Enten described as the “loyal Republican base” that has stuck with the president through “thick and thin”—disapprove of rising gas prices under Trump.
“You just don’t ever see numbers like these,” the data analyst said, appearing stunned by the figures.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
