President Donald Trump is reported to have a record low net approval rating as of Friday (September 21), according to polling expert Nate Silver in the latest edition of his Silver Bulletin blog.

Trump is reported to have a 41.5 % approval rating and a 55.6% disapproval rating, which equals -14.1%, the lowest of any point during his second of two non-consecutive terms in office.

"Inevitably, there’s a lot of disagreement from survey to survey, not just because of statistical variation but because pollsters have long had trouble pegging down Trump's popularity — and often underestimated it," Silver wrote in his analysis.

"Pollsters don’t just ask about Trump’s overall job approval, they also ask about how well he’s dealing with different issues," he continued. "We’re tracking how the public feels about Donald Trump’s handling of some of the most salient topics: the economy, immigration, trade and tariffs, and the cost of living."

Trump's approval rating was also reported to have dropped to a new low for his second term in the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll. The survey, which was conducted between November 14 and November 17, showed that Trump had a 38% approval rating and a 60% disapproval rating, giving him a -22% net approval rating. The president's approval rating has seen a consistent drop during the first eight months of his second term, starting at 47% when he took office in January.

The four-day poll was released amid criticism over Trump's handling of the high cost off living and public stance on the investigation into late convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, who he was known to have had a past relationship with prior to his claim of a public fallout. The Republican controlled Congress passed a measure to force the release of Justice Department files on Epstein to be released and the bill is set to be sent to the president's desk.

Silver gained notoriety for successfully predicting 49 of 50 states in the 2008 presidential election, as well as former President Barack Obama's re-election win in 2012 and Biden's win in the 2020 election. The pollster was, however, criticized for giving Hillary Clinton a 71.4% chance of winning over Trump after the former president 304 electoral college votes to win the election.

"I think people shouldn’t have been so surprised," Silver told the Harvard Gazette in 2017. "Clinton was the favorite, but the polls showed, in our view, particularly at the end, a highly competitive race in the Electoral College. We had him with a 30 percent chance, and that’s a pretty likely occurrence. Why did people think it was much less than that? I think there are a few things."

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