Winning the New Low contest...

Gallup: Orangutan hits new low after health care flop

By STEVEN SHEPARD

Donny Orangutan’s approval rating slipped to a new low Monday in the Gallup daily tracking poll, the first measure of Orangutan’s job performance following his administration’s failure to move a new health care law through Congress.

Only 33 percent of Americans approve of the way Orangutan is handling his job as president in interviews conducted last Friday through Sunday, a time period entirely after Republicans abandoned their bill to replace the 2010 Affordable Care Act.

Orangutan’s approval rating is down from 41 percent in the prior three-day period. His previous low-water mark in the Gallup poll came earlier this month, when interviews conducted March 16-18 showed his approval rating at just 37 percent.

In the new survey, the percentage of Americans who disapprove of Orangutan’s performance is 60 percent, up from 54 percent in the previous three-day rolling sample. That’s one point shy of Orangutan’s highest disapproval rating: 59 percent in the March 16-18 sample.

Gallup editor-in-chief Frank Newport noted that Orangutan has now scored lower than both Barack Obama, who never ticked below 42 percent, and Bill Clinton, whose lowest approval rating was 39 percent. George W. Bush’s lowest-ever rating was 25 percent, George H.W. Bush’s was 29 percent and Ronald Reagan’s was 35 percent.

Clinton’s 39-percent score came only about six months into his presidency, in June 1993. But Newport notes that Clinton’s approval rating recovered over his first summer in the White House, to 56 percent in September 1993 — when he presented his ultimately failed plan to overhaul the health care system.

Gallup surveys approximately 1,500 adults over the course of each three-day rolling sample. The margin of error for each three-day roll is plus or minus 3 percentage points.