The low approval ratings of President Trump in the week before his inauguration have been replaced with approval by a majority of voters, according to the Rasmussen Reports polling operation.

Rasmussen’s daily presidential tracking poll for Tuesday showed that 57 percent of likely U.S. voters approved of President Trump’s job performance, and 43 percent disapproved. To break it down further, 42 percent strongly approve of the way Mr. Trump was performing and 33 percent strongly disapproved, Rasmussen reported.

However, Rasmussen’s polling is at odds with another respected pollster, Gallup, which had Mr. Trump at 45 percent approval as of Sunday.

And a Rasmussen spokesman said the numbers are based on a three-day rolling average that included last Thursday - before Mr. Trump was president, and on Sunday, and Monday.

Mr. Trump’s administration had a rocky first weekend. His inaugural speech was panned by some as not unifying enough. He complained that the media deliberately low-balled the attendance at his inauguration. And there was a massive turnout at the liberal Women’s March on Washington where Mr. Trump was mocked and attacked.

Rasmussen’s poll showed the president was on an upward trend.

According to Gallup, which surveyed people after Mr. Trump became president, his approval rating on Monday was 45 percent.

And according to RealClearPolitics.com, Mr. Trump’s approval rating before he became president on Friday was an average of 41.8 percent.

David Cohen, a political science professor at the Bliss Institute for Applied Politics at the University of Akron, said he does not consider Rasmussen methodology as reliable as Gallup’s.

"All presidents should expect a bump after the inauguration. He came into office at the lowest approval for a modern president. He had nowhere to go but up. However, his 45 percent is the lowest initial job approval rating for a president in polling history. Obama was at 68 percent,” Mr. Cohen said.

“Don’t expect the modest approval to last. A very bad first week and controversial statements/actions will likely mean a drop,” Mr. Cohen said.

Jeffrey Broxmeyer, a University of Toledo political science professor, said Gallup bases its surveys on a broader sample than Rasmussen, using “voting age population” and people who have cell phones, giving Gallup a younger, more diverse, and poorer sample, but also less likely than Rasmussen’s sample to vote. He said Rasmussen skews toward “older, wealthier, high propensity voters.”

“This Rasmussen poll is an outlier from what I can tell, although it is certainly possible the trend line is accurate,” Mr. Broxmeyer said.

Rasmussen noted that its final pre-election polling ranked second in predicting the election outcome out of 11 polls done in the five days before the election.

Rasmussen’s survey of Nov. 2-6 showed Democrat Hillary Clinton leading by 2 percentage points. Only one pollster, IBD/TIPP predicted a Trump victory. The other nine firms had Mrs. Clinton winning by 3 points or more.

Rasmussen’s “tracking” poll is reported as a three-day rolling average, with surveys of 500 likely voters taken each night. Sampling was done Thursday, before Mr. Trump was president, and on Sunday and Monday. 

Rasmussen said that it reaches 500 responses with a combination of landline calls and an-online survey. It says is sampling error is plus or minus 2.5 points.

Contact Tom Troy: tomtroy@theblade.com or 419-724-6058 or on Twitter @TomFTroy.

First Published January 24, 2017, 9:44 p.m.