Is presidemt trump the most hated president
Executive summary
Public opinion data show President Donald Trump registering unusually low approval numbers and historic partisan divides compared with modern presidents, but whether that equates to being "the most hated president" depends on definitions and measures that polls do not directly capture; available polling shows he began both of his terms with among the lowest new‑term approval ratings and a record partisan gap, yet "hate" as an emotional judgment is not the same as disapproval and is not directly measured in the cited datasets [1][2][3].
1. Approval ratings place Trump at or near modern lows
Multiple polling trackers and historical compendia indicate Trump’s approval ratings have been unusually weak in the modern era: The New York Times’ interactive comparisons show both of Trump’s terms began with historically low approval ratings relative to past presidents [1], and Gallup’s reporting calls his new‑term approval the lowest for a new president since 1953 [2]; aggregated snapshots from RealClear and The Economist/YouGov commonly show higher disapproval than approval in the mid‑40s to mid‑50s range for disapproval [4][5].
2. The partisan divide around Trump is historically extreme
Beyond raw approval numbers, the intensity of partisan polarization around Trump stands out: reporting notes an unprecedented gap between near‑total Republican support and near‑zero Democratic support in some periods — a 92‑point partisan gap was documented in one analysis — a level unmatched in modern comparisons cited [3]. That degree of ideological sorting makes Trump less comparable to presidents whose opposition cut across party lines rather than clustering predictably by affiliation [3].
3. "Most hated" is a different claim than "most disapproved" — the data limit that leap
The sources provide rigorous measures of approval, net approval and historical comparisons (Gallup, American Presidency Project, Roper, FiveThirtyEight/Silver Bulletin), but they do not operationalize "hate" as an emotion or direct social‑sentiment index; approval polls measure judgments of job performance, not whether a subject is "hated" [6][7][8]. Therefore, while Trump’s net approval figures and partisan polarization are well documented, labeling him the single "most hated" president exceeds what the cited polling archives directly measure [9][10].
4. Historical context complicates superlatives — other presidents also faced deep public loathing at times, but direct polling comparisons are uneven
Comparative datasets allow ranking by approval and net approval across administrations — sources like the American Presidency Project and Roper Center compile multi‑president approval series so historians can compare highs and lows — yet those series focus on approval metrics and contain methodological caveats (e.g., differences in poll availability and question formats across eras) that weaken absolute claims about who is the most reviled in all senses [8][10][9]. The New York Times and other trackers explicitly compare net approval across presidents, showing Trump among the worst in the modern sampling frame, but stop short of translating that into a definitive "most hated" verdict [1].
5. Two readings coexist and both are supported by the sources
One defensible reading from the data: by conventional polling metrics of approval, net approval and partisan gap, Trump ranks among the least‑approved and most‑polarizing modern presidents — a factual, evidence‑backed statement supported by Gallup, NYT, RealClear and other trackers [2][1][4][11]. The complementary, more cautious reading: the label "most hated president" is a qualitative judgment that the available polling archives do not directly measure, and so cannot be incontrovertibly proven from these sources alone [6][7].
Conclusion
The best-supported conclusion from the reporting is that President Trump is one of the most unpopular and most polarizing presidents in modern polling history — with historically low approval starts and record partisan divides — but the specific claim that he is "the most hated president" moves beyond what approval polls and the cited historical datasets directly establish, because they do not measure hate as an emotion or provide a single, comparable metric across centuries to settle that superlative [1][2][3].