Trump critics, take this! After govt shutdown, US prez has highest approval rating, says survey

Washington, Feb 12: To those who were sanguine that the record-breaking government shutdown in the US that ended on January 25 after continuing for over a month would badly hurt the approval ratings of President Donald Trump, here is a shocker.

The Republican president in fact has got his highest approval rating since he took over in January 2017, said a new survey

According to the poll conducted by Rasmussen Reports, New Jersey, US, 52 per cent of likely American voters approved of the president's job performance while 47 per cent did not.

Another interesting part of this finding is that while 39 per cent of the respondents have strongly approved of Trump's performance, an equal 39 per cent has strongly disapproved of it.

It gave Trump a Presidential Approval Index Rating of zero which means he hasn't got a minus rating for the first time in almost two years.

The shutdown happened in the US after the president and the Congress remained stubborn on their respective stands on building of a wall along the Mexico border.

Though the shutdown was lifted after over a month, Trump said another shutdown wasn't unlikely if a deal was not reached and warned of using emergency powers to have the wall in place.

However, while the Rasmussen Reports said Trump has a high approval rate, other polls indicated that things were not so rosy for him. Real Clear Politics, which made an average of nine different polls on Trump's approval ratings, found only 42.4 per cent people backing him while 54.2 per cent not.