Barack Obama: Most Americans want him back as President, poll shows

52% of those polled yearn for Mr Obama, while only 43% are glad Mr Trump is President

Mr Obama promised he would keep fighting for the issues he cared about as a citizen (Peter Souza)

Donald Trump has been President for 13 days and yet more than half of Americans are missing former President Barack Obama, according to a new poll.

A total of 52 per cent of Americans are yearning for Mr Obama, found a survey from Public Policy Polling, while just 43 per cent are glad that Mr Trump is in the White House.

Furthermore, 40 per cent want the new President to be impeached, up from 35 per cent one week ago.

More than 500,000 people have also signed up to a petition by campaign group Impeach Trump Now on the basis that he has not taken a far enough step away from his real estate empire whilst in government.

Mr Trump, despite winning the electoral college, lost the popular vote by close to three million votes and is already suffering the lowest popularity ratings in contemporary American history.

The low numbers come down to opposition to his policies.

Only a quarter of Americans (26 per cent) were in favour of the Muslim ban, the executive order which barred nearly all travellers from seven Muslim-majority countries for at least 90 days.

Almost half of Trump supporters were in favour of the order, however, and 48 per cent believed the protesters at airports around the country - as well as people at the women’s marches - were paid by billionaire investor and Hillary Clinton supporter George Soros.

Mr Trump’s view that millions of illegal voters cost him the popular vote is not widely shared (26 per cent agreement) and 54 per cent of voters are opposed to Americans paying to build the wall along the Mexican border. The wall is estimated to cost as much as $14 billion and Mexican President Pena Nieto has vowed he will not reimburse the US.

The President’s signature campaign pledge, to repeal and replace Obamacare, has become increasingly unpopular. Just 41 per cent of voters are against the Affordable Care Act.

His unpopular policies started early. On Inauguration day he demanded to know why the National Park Service had tweeted pictures of relatively small crowd sizes at his swearing in ceremony compared to Mr Obama’s, and then censored the government agency’s social media access. Just 30 per cent of voters approved of that plan.

His chief strategist and Breitbart founder Steve Bannon has very low support of 19 per cent of voters. Just over one third of those polled think it was a good idea for Mr Bannon to become a permanent member of the National Security Council.

The poll surveyed 725 registered voters between 30 and 31 January with 80 per cent of them participating through land line telephones. The margin of error was 3.6 per cent.