Half of Americans think Trump a ‘failed’ president: New poll

New York: Half of registered American voters say they think history will view Donald Trump as a “failed” president, according to a new poll released here.

The poll of 1,000 registered voters, carried out by USA TODAY/Suffolk University from Dec. 16 to 20, found stark partisan divides in attitudes towards Trump’s presidency, with many Republicans saying the president should not concede to President-elect Joe Biden, a Democrat.

When asked how they think history will assess Trump’s tenure, just over 50 percent of those polled say he will be viewed as a “failed” president. About 30 percent say he will be judged as either a “good” or “great” president, and 16 percent say he’ll be viewed as a “fair” president. Just over 4 percent of those surveyed are undecided.

The results are sharply split along party lines, with 87 percent of Democrats saying he’ll be judged as a “failed” president and 67 percent of Republicans saying he’ll be viewed as either “good” or “great.”

The poll’s results mark a sharp contrast from the same survey conducted in the waning days of former President Barack Obama’s second term. At the time, 50 percent said he’d be judged as either “good” or “great,” and 23 percent said he’d be viewed as a “failed” president.

The survey’s release comes as Trump continues to rail against the results of last month’s election even though the Electoral College earlier this month affirmed Biden’s win. The president and his allies have launched a legal campaign to try to overturn the election, claiming widespread fraud cost him a second term, though virtually all of their lawsuits have been dismissed for lack of evidence or standing.

Roughly 70 percent of Americans in the new survey said Trump should concede the race to Biden, which he has thus far refused to do, while 26 percent say he should not. Fifty-seven percent of Republicans said he should not concede.