Follow Zelensky's Approval Ratings

 

At a press conference today, President Trump is recorded as saying:

"The leader in Ukraine is down at 4% approval ratings. Wouldn't the people of Ukraine need to have an election? Ukraine is being wiped out." source

Numbers and proper nouns make the best search terms. This goes for speculative searching (searching for something where you aren't sure you'll find it) and investigative searching (evaluating information you found).  But it's not all as easy as searching for a number.

In this case, if you search for 4% approval ratings Trump OR Ukraine, you'll retrieve the quote found above and other reporters' coverage of the news conference. This doesn't mean that because the number appears in multiple locations it should be taken as a fact (the only fact is that Trump said it).

In order to check if 4% is, in fact, the current approval rating of Ukraine's leader, a better query would be:

Zelensky approval rating

Some of the results will be about Trump's press conference remarks since that is fresh news as of today. Examining the first page of results (in Google):

Fox News: Zelenskyy faces perilous re-election odds as US, Russia ... 

Mujtaba Rahman on X: "Where is this 4% approval rating ... 

The New York Times: Zelensky Could Face Tough Re-election Prospects, Polls ...

Statista: Volodymyr Zelenskyy's approval rating in Ukraine 2019-2024 

Yahoo: Donald Trump claims Zelensky only has a 4% approval rating 

The Brussels Times: Ukraine: President Zelenskyy's popularity took a dip in...

The articles may be skimmed to see if they are just reporting what Trump said, or have additional information on Zelensky's approval ratings.  Fox News, the thread on X, the New York Times, Statisa and the Brussels Times are all in agreement: Zelensky's approval ratings (last time they were sampled in Dec. 2024) placed him at a 50% approval rating. This was down 40% since the start of the conflict in 2022.

Remember what's important here: President Trump did not take a survey, he reported on one. His numbers don't agree with any other sources. Where did he come up with the number 4%. That is a question no one in the room asked him. But plenty of sources fact checked him before passing along his erroneous claim.

This analysis from Statisa comes to a different conclusion:  

October 2024, nearly seven out of ten Ukrainians approved of the activities of Volodymyr Zelenskyy as the president of the country.