Which modern presidents saw the biggest swings between peak and trough approval ratings during their terms?
Executive summary
George W. Bush stands out in the modern record for one of the largest documented swings between a wartime high and a later low — hitting a Gallup-era peak around 90% after 9/11 and plunging to historically low territory by 2008 — but other presidents who presided through dramatic crises, notably Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman, also registered enormous peak-to-trough movements; a definitive, ordered ranking requires computing peak and trough values from the daily/series data maintained by Gallup and archival projects [1] [2] [3] [4].
1. George W. Bush: the textbook large swing born of crisis then backlash
The most oft-cited example of a modern-era swing is George W. Bush, whose approval rating surged to the single highest Gallup-recorded peak (about 90%) in the weeks after the 9/11 attacks and related rally-around-the-flag effects, and later tumbled amid prolonged wars and the 2008 financial crisis to one of the lowest readings recorded in the Gallup era (the February 2008 low of roughly 19% is commonly cited) — together implying a swing on the order of seven decades of polling points [1] [2].
2. Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman: wartime highs, peacetime lows
Longer historical series show that presidents who led during major wars often reached extremely high peaks — Franklin D. Roosevelt reached an approval high cited at 87% in June 1945, and Harry Truman similarly hit the high-80s in May 1945 — but those peaks sit alongside later declines in popularity, and the exact peak-to-trough sizes for those administrations are best derived from the Gallup/archival series collected by the American Presidency Project and other data repositories [2] [1] [3].
3. Donald Trump, Obama and others: smaller swings but sustained polarization
More recent presidents have demonstrated different dynamics: Donald Trump never registered a Gallup approval above 50% during his first term and is reported to have peaked near 49% in 2020 and left office with readings in the mid‑30s, producing a more modest peak‑to‑trough spread than the wartime giants but reflecting intense partisan sorting rather than a massive short-term spike and collapse [5] [6]. Barack Obama averaged a high level for the modern era (roughly a 47% average) and is noted for relatively smaller peaks and troughs compared with the extremes of wartime or crisis-era swings [7].
4. Methodological note and why exact rankings vary
Different outlets and historians cite different numbers because Gallup is the only continuous single-question time series since the 1930s and other aggregators (Roper Center, Silver’s datasets, the American Presidency Project) compile daily and weekly values that can change the calculation depending on whether one uses single-day peaks, weekly averages, or retrospective final ratings; therefore a rigorous ranking of "biggest swings" requires running the same peak/trough method across a single, consistent dataset such as Gallup’s historical series or Nate Silver’s downloadable daily series [8] [4] [3] [9].
5. Bottom line and caveats
Using widely circulated Gallup-era benchmarks, George W. Bush’s rise to about 90% and fall to the high teens constitutes one of the largest modern swings in recorded presidential approval [1] [2], while FDR and Truman also register as major movers when wartime peaks and later troughs are compared [2] [1]; however, any definitive ordering should be treated as provisional until researchers compute peak‑minus‑trough values from one consistent poll series (Gallup/daily aggregates) because different sources report highs and lows using varied definitions and time windows [3] [4].