Love him or hate him

Only about 40-45% of people say they approve of the job Donald Trump is doing as President, but it's often said that his supporters are especially enthusiastic.  Some surveys that ask the question about approval follow with one about whether you approve/disapprove "strongly" or just "somewhat."  I looked at those for presidents back to Jimmy Carter.  To limit the amount of data, I picked the first time when the President in question had roughly the same overall approval as Trump does now.  The figure shows the percent who strongly approved and strongly disapproved, along with the predicted values from simple time trend.  

There is an upward trend for both, and it's about the same size for approval and disapproval.  That is, there's more strong approval and disapproval, and fewer "somewhat" answers.  Relative to the trend, Trump doesn't stand out in terms of either strong approval or strong disapproval.  Two who did stand out to some extent were George W. Bush, with more strong reactions, and Bill Clinton, with fewer.  I noticed that the date I had picked for Bush was early September 2005, just after hurricane Katrina, and thought that might have temporarily boosted his strong disapproves, so I added one from July 2005.  His overall approval rating was a bit better then, with fewer strong disapproves and about the same number of strong approves--he was still above the trend for both.

I was expecting more differences among individual presidents, but seem to have found one more example of the gradual growth of partisan polarization since the 1970s.

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]