Trump approval rating holds steady in post-Mueller poll

President Trump’s approval rating has held steady in the days following the release of conclusions from special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe that said he found no evidence of a conspiracy between Moscow and the president’s campaign in the 2016 election.

A Harvard CAPS/Harris poll released exclusively to The Hill showed that 45 percent of U.S. voters approve of the job Trump is doing in the Oval Office, virtually unchanged from a similar poll conducted last month. Fifty-five percent of respondents said they disapprove.

{mosads}Trump has taken a victory lap since Attorney General William Barr released a summary of Mueller’s report. Barr in a four-page letter to Congress also said he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein did not find evidence to bring a charge of obstruction of justice against Trump.

Slightly more than half of the new pool’s  respondents – 54 percent – said that Mueller’s conclusion does not affect their support for Trump, while 22 percent said that the conclusion makes them less likely to back the president.

Twenty-four percent said they are now more likely to support him, according to the poll.

Trump gets his highest marks for stimulating jobs, with 57 percent approval, according to the survey. Likewise, his handling of the economy gets 57 percent approval.

But approval of Trump’s work administering the government is underwater at 42 percent, according to the poll. His handling of foreign affairs doesn’t fare much better, with just 44 percent of respondents approving.

Mark Penn, the co-director of the Harvard CAPS/Harris poll, said that Trump’s stagnant approval rating in the wake of Mueller’s conclusion signals that the president will still have to work to bring swing voters into his corner.

“Trump’s approval remained steady even after the Mueller report, indicating he still has a lot to do to win back swing voters despite strong approval of his economic stewardship,” Penn said.

Trump’s overall approval rating still fares better than that of his party. According to the survey, 41 percent of respondents approve of the way the GOP is handling its job, compared to 59 percent who disapprove.

Likewise, 43 percent said they approve of the Democratic Party’s job performance, while 57 percent disapprove, the survey found.

The Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll online survey of 1,437 registered voters was conducted from March 25-26.

The Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll is a collaboration of the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University and The Harris Poll. The Hill will be working with Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll throughout 2019.

Full poll results will be posted online later this week. The Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll survey is an online sample drawn from the Harris Panel and weighted to reflect known demographics. As a representative online sample, it does not report a probability confidence interval.