Trump approval ratings thread 1.1

[hopper]

CBS/YouGov poll of adults:

I am a strong Trump supporter, period - 19%
I am a Trump supporter, but to keep my support, he has to deliver what I want - 22%
I am against Trump now, but could reconsider him if he does a good job - 19%
I am strongly against Trump, period - 40%

Not exactly an approval poll, but if you grouped the people who say they support him and those who are against him, it's 41/59.

Also, deporting illegal immigrants and banning Muslims are more important to Trump supporters than cutting taxes.

Yeah but Trump isn't banning all Muslims.

[hopper]

What has he done for those low-income, low-information voters that he gulled in November?

Actually nothing for low-income voters to answer your question.

[hopper]

What has he done for those low-income, low-information voters that he gulled in November?

True, but those same voters will happily back him in 2020.

Maybe maybe not remember a lot those voters were Obama-Trump Voters.

[hopper]

CBS/YouGov poll of adults:

I am a strong Trump supporter, period - 19%
I am a Trump supporter, but to keep my support, he has to deliver what I want - 22%
I am against Trump now, but could reconsider him if he does a good job - 19%
I am strongly against Trump, period - 40%

Not exactly an approval poll, but if you grouped the people who say they support him and those who are against him, it's 41/59.

Also, deporting illegal immigrants and banning Muslims are more important to Trump supporters than cutting taxes.

Yeah but Trump isn't banning all Muslims.

He obviously would if not for the constitutional issues associated with doing so. The various complications of the EOs were blatantly in order to try (unsuccessfully thus far) to avoid them being found unconstitutional and not for any other reason.

I think your wrong but if you think he would ban all Muslims you have a right to your thought.

[hopper]

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Key point about 2018 that I don't think people like MT realize is Trump is likely to kill the last remaining GOP strongholds in Cali in Orange County an Southern Cali which make up 7-8 seats

What? MT Treasurer is well aware that Republicans are starting to have a suburban problem. It's RINO Tom and others who insist that the inner-ring suburban numbers for Clinton were just a one-time thing.

Could be a one-time thing with problem with inner-ring Suburban Voters or it could be an ongoing thing. One election doesn't make a trend.

[hopper]

I'm not calling anyone out in this thread, but overall, this thread is an example of what is wrong with American politics. We are essentially in campaign mode 24/7, much more concerned with politician numbers than with policy. Furthermore, our number 1 goal is not to deal with policy, but to defeat our political "enemies", aka the other side.

This is a problem on both sides and I do not see it ending anytime soon. If a democrat gets into office in 2020, I think you'll see immediate opposition from the republicans.

It's a problem in the modern era when peddling constant outrage and opposition sells at the polls, while coming together to form policy doesn't sell at all.

It's a mirror opposite of post ww2 america.

Lol, cry me a river.

Your president is deeply unpopular and pushes for terrible legislation. So save me the bothsides, moral preening bull****.

You misread my post. Trump in many ways deserves low approvals right now. Slow, half-assed legislation and constant investigation intrigue is deserving of scorn. BUT, that doesn't mean politicians in congress don't have a duty to craft policy they were elected to put forward. Sometimes we forget that it is the legislation branch that is supposed to form legislation and vote on it, while the executive branch can veto and execute.

Well, this isn't a "bothsides" problem, but a GOP one.

Democrats have been willing to work on things like infrastructure and the ACA for years now, it is the GOP who shuts down any attempts to do so.

You want a functional legislative branch, then you have to get rid of the GOP.

No Dems will never let go of ObamaCare because its their parties legislation. Infrastructure-Yes Dems would work with Trump there your right.

[hopper]

The Republicans have gerrymandered their way into control of Congress. If they still can't pass bills, don't blame the Democrats. The last Democratic Congress (2009-2010) was very productive.

Its not true Republican gerrymandered their way to a House Majority. The Dems would have more seats if not for gerrymandering but not a House Majority.

[hopper]

I'm not calling anyone out in this thread, but overall, this thread is an example of what is wrong with American politics. We are essentially in campaign mode 24/7, much more concerned with politician numbers than with policy. Furthermore, our number 1 goal is not to deal with policy, but to defeat our political "enemies", aka the other side.

Campaign mode rightly ends on or before Inauguration Day. President Trump has been ineffective in pushing the New Feudalism that the Hard Right wants -- the "Christian and Corporate State" in which 95% of the people suffer for 2% in return for vague promises of Pie-in-the-Sky-When-You-Die. The attempt by President Trump to tout his non-existent landslide win (even if the Electoral College result is analogous to that of JFK in 1961 or Carter in 1976, neither of them using their levels of electoral wins as justification for calling for the Other Side to give up forever.

This President still acts much like a dictator, the sort who believes that the election that brings him to power ends all political debate forever. He violates so many norms of American political life  that he cannot fail to lose support.  

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With a President having an approval rating in the high thirties or lower (and this is with me assuming that today's Q poll is a transitory freak), I expect the Republicans to endure an electoral bloodbath in 2020 as their 2014 wave in the Senate is reversed. If Democrats have not turned the House in 2018, then they do it then. I expect President Trump to be seen as a catastrophic failure, after which an Obama-like President gets every chance he needs to turn America around.    

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The Right organized a virulent campaign of opposition against President Obama from practically Inauguration Day, smashing every Obama policy possible. Now we have a President acting more like Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier (brutal dictator of Haiti who, like Trump, won with demagoguery in a free election) than like any prior President of the United States.

But something else happened:  the disappearance of the Moderate Republicans, the sorts of people who were viable alternatives to Democrats who went a bit too far on policy. Instead we have liberals and near-fascists. We get to choose between watered-down versions of Scandinavian-style Social Democrats and people who would like America to resemble Franco's Spain. You know how the latter went -- if you disliked the oppression and poverty, then either emigrate or go to Church to plead to God to give strength to accept the hideous life that you endure.    

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The Lunatic Fringe took over the Republican Party, and it now has the President as a willing accomplice.

Trump is not hard-right and neither are the Republicans that are in Congress. Its that they are too conservative. There is a difference between being hard-right and being too Conservative. I don't think anybody wants 95% of America too suffer either.

I don't think Trump acts like a dictator. I remember when Obama was in office and some on the right thought he was acting like he was a king.

I sort of agree with your last paragraph though.

[hopper]

I still think it's too early to use approval ratings to predict 2018. A year and a half is an eternity in politics. History tells us that the party out of power makes inroads and low approval ratings cost seats, but the magnitude is still up in the air.

We have examples of presidents down in the dumps coming back. In 1982, nobody thought reagan would be re-elected, and even Obama in 2011 was looking vulnerable.

Trump, of course, has unique issues. But there is a lot going on in this world. If something happens in korea, it could be a big factor.

If I recall correctly, 1982 and 2010 were still horrendous midterms for the presidents even though they did manage to turn the ship around by reelection time. So your analogy isn't really applicable since there's no example of a President turning the ship around before the midterms

1982-There was still problems with inflationary rates. 2010-The economy was still kind of in bad shape.

[hopper]

We have examples of presidents down in the dumps coming back. In 1982, nobody thought reagan would be re-elected, and even Obama in 2011 was looking vulnerable.

We do, although something they all have in common is winning their first term by comfortable margins or more. If Trump's reelection followed a similar path as, say, Obama's, then he'd lose. Obama's reelection was almost half of is first election's margin. Trump already had no room to spare in that regard.

Of course I guess you could say Trump could come roaring back in popularity, but then I'd say that Trump was never popular and even through the election was rated unfavorably by almost 2/3rds of the country. He simply doesn't have the type of personality or behavior to be as popular as he needs to be. This is something we should all be able to agree on. Putting aside the massive amount of material - on video/audio - of course Trump bullying people and saying crude things, things like making fun of disabled people during a rally will put a hard limit on his favorability ceiling, imo.

I'm not even sure a 9/11-type event could help him indefinitely. It could give him a big popularity boost, but Trump always seems to somehow squander good will from the people, whether by his doing or by some new scandal breaking, or whatever, and this is something Bush never had - he was a relatively clean, unoffensive slate compared to Trump. Also, given how hardened opposition is to him among Democrats and some Indies, I'm not sure how much popularity he'd really get from a rally-around-the-flag event.

Yeah he may not have the temperament to be re-elected for a second term as President at this point anyway it maybe is looking like.

[hopper]

Trump at 36/59 in Gallup

Vindication DENIED.

As a general rule, if you're under investigation, changing your story about every two hours makes you look guilty as hell. Trump was "totally vindicated" by Comey's testimony. Except for the parts of the testimony were Comey called Trump a liar and implied that he had committed obstruction of justice, which happened to be untrue. Despite those lies, Comey was still a "leaker", meaning that he probably had leaked lies to the public. Except that he didn't, because Trump's own son went public and announced that Comey was indeed fired because of the Russia investigation. Except that that didn't constituted obstruction of justice, for some reason. Confused yet?

The Russia Investigation didn't stop because Trump fired Comey though.

[hopper]

I still think it's too early to use approval ratings to predict 2018. A year and a half is an eternity in politics. History tells us that the party out of power makes inroads and low approval ratings cost seats, but the magnitude is still up in the air.

There are plenty of precedents for 2018, but conditions now are with little precedent. Democrats lost huge numbers of House and Senate seats in the two midterm years under Obama and Republicans lost huge numbers of House and Senate seats in 2006 under Dubya. But Republicans gained a little in 2002 in the wave of patriotism following 9/11.  

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People who recognized that Obama and Reagan had similar skill sets as politicians could have gotten 1984 wrong in 1982 -- but not 2012 wrong in 2010.  Incumbents win big against weak challengers like Goldwater, McGovern, and Mondale... Romney, almost everyone must now admit, did surprisingly well against Obama. Romney was a really-strong challenger. But remember that the incumbent of 2012 was an expert campaigner, a man gifted with language to a strong degree, with an improving economy, and no hint of scandal. He had one big success in foreign policy -- whacking the worst terrorist in history with the rest of the world applauding.

I look at Mitt Romney's strengths, and I see someone who would have defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016. Maybe by a smaller margin of the electoral vote, but we would have far fewer problems with him as President.

As I see it, Donald Trump is good at only one thing as President, and that is at throwing aspersions about others and telling people "My way or the Highway!" Of course, Reagan quit talking about Carter soon after the inauguration, and Obama had bigger concerns than blaming Dubya. It's just as well.

Donald Trump has a dream Congress with a unified Party willing to vote a Party line on taxes and replacing Obamacare with "run out of money and die". So far President Trump has been one of the lower achievers as President in getting legislation passed. Heck, Dubya did better.

I see Trump as a one-term President. He made promises to people and then betrayed those to whom he made those promises. President Trump has rushed into the second term of Richard Nixon without Nixon's legitimate achievements in the first term.  

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If he handles it well. But that is one gigantic qualification. But if he handles it badly, then he could have a world situation that would make the Iranian Revolution and the hostage situation in Iran look trivial by contrast. I see no reason to expect him to handle it well.

I certainly hope that Democrats don't have images of smouldering ruins of Seoul to show in campaign messages of either 2018 or 2020. That's one political asset that Democrats do not want.

A reasonably competent challenger defeats Trump in 2020. Trump has been unpopular almost from the moment of his inauguration, and he's doing nothing to make himself more popular. The He used the executive order in efforts to shortcut Congress and evade the Constitution. He is going to spend more time shaking off allegations that he won a tainted election and of obstruction of justice. base is not enough; McGovern and Mondale at least won their Party's bases.  They won almost nothing else.

I was for him unwinding previous executive orders but not creating new ones of his own. The election was not tainted he won the election. I think you have a point that he shouldn't have said  anything about dropping the Flynn Investigation though.

[hopper]

This does not change my map. A state that Donald Trump barely lost in 2016, a state that is ordinarily understood as a swing state, seems to be rejecting the President about as decisively as Oklahoma typically rejects the usual Democrat.

Prepare yourselves, Republicans, for a defeat analogous to those of Hoover in 1932 or Carter in 1980 for your President in 2020.

Trump 2020: Making America Grasp for Alternatives!

No the electorate is too polarized for a Dem victory the size of FDR's in 1932 and a Republican victory the size of Reagans in 1980.

[hopper]

Speaking of the economy, it is still mind-boggling that Trump's numbers are in the tank with a fairly healthy economy.

If he had just shut up and had and semblance of self discipline, he would be around 50+ right now. That is what Clinton did in the late 90s, just ride the good economy to high approval ratings.

Yeah but Clinton had the policy-chops that Trump currently lacks.

[hopper]

It is hard to defend failure. Legislative failure, moral failure, and diplomatic failure already mark this administration. It is only a matter of time before the Obama bull market comes to an end; I doubt that with his inadequate preparation for the Presidency he will have a clue if the economy starts to go bad. His ideology would make things worse.

The only thing Trump has done well in his presidency thus far is in the foreign policy arena.

[hopper]

actually, his whites approval are way below what a normal Republican would see. He won whites by 21%, and he's down to a 6% approval among whites. Even the GOP's white polarization strategy isn't able to overcome the deficits at this point.

Whites aren't a monolithic voting group though.

[hopper]

The most recent polling (CBS, Pew, Gallup) all seem to roughly correlate with 538's general pattern of 55% disapproval, 38% approve. I trust Pew's breakdown and it roughly shows the fastest growing segments of the electorate disapproving of Trump and the least fast approving of Trump. (the less educated, white voters).

You'll notice the 18-49 group roughly voted for Clinton as a cohort and post-grads and college grads (a rising segment of the cohort) are disapproving of Trump with heavy margins. Ditto Latinos and African Americans. They're the big reason he's all underwater. And they're all heavy Democratic groups.

Trump is basically underwater by the fastest growing segments of the electorate while the slowest growing segments are backing him.

No College Grads only voted for Hillary 49-45% according to the 2016 Presidential Election Page on Wikipedia. They aren't a big Dem voting group like Non-Whites are.

[hopper]

I guess these things happen when The Media supports everything you do.

The Media doesn't like Trump. Most members of the media are Democrats.

[hopper]

actually, his whites approval are way below what a normal Republican would see. He won whites by 21%, and he's down to a 6% approval among whites. Even the GOP's white polarization strategy isn't able to overcome the deficits at this point.

Whites aren't a monolithic voting group though.

Yes, I agree. 35-40% of whites will always vote Democratic. I was just saying the traditional GOP advantage among whites isn't working out right now and that Trump's white polarization strategy isn't going to be enough, since 35-40% of whites vote Democratic.

The most recent polling (CBS, Pew, Gallup) all seem to roughly correlate with 538's general pattern of 55% disapproval, 38% approve. I trust Pew's breakdown and it roughly shows the fastest growing segments of the electorate disapproving of Trump and the least fast approving of Trump. (the less educated, white voters).

You'll notice the 18-49 group roughly voted for Clinton as a cohort and post-grads and college grads (a rising segment of the cohort) are disapproving of Trump with heavy margins. Ditto Latinos and African Americans. They're the big reason he's all underwater. And they're all heavy Democratic groups.

Trump is basically underwater by the fastest growing segments of the electorate while the slowest growing segments are backing him.

No College Grads only voted for Hillary 49-45% according to the 2016 Presidential Election Page on Wikipedia. They aren't a big Dem voting group like Non-Whites are.

No, college graduates voted Clinton overall. It's the white college graduates that voted 48-45% Trump. College graduates overall voted Clinton 52-42%. They're an expanding bloc of the electorate and they trend Democratic. (Particularly because education is correlated with partisanship; lower education and whiter = more Republican, higher education regardless of race makes you more Democratic).

I said College Grads overall voted for Hillary 49-45% according to the "2016 Presidential Election Page" on Wikipedia. College Grads overall didn't vote for Hillary in the margins that Non-White Voters did.

[hopper]

Gallup (July 3rd)

Approve 37% (-2)
Disapprove 57% (+1)

I wonder if he could go down under 35%.

He could, but will take something drastic. Maybe a North Korean missile striking Okinawa? A 2000-point fall in the Dow-Jones average?  Bad news that he can't claim is fake?

Approval of the President has typically been close to the partisan divide since the effect of 9/11 faded -- in good times.  So it has been with Dubya and with Obama. For approval to go below about 45%, something bad has to happen.

There's not much 'squishy' support. Once one gets below 45% approval, one is starting to lose the support of strong partisans. Non-achievement can take one to 40% and incompetence perhaps to 33%. To go below 33% one needs an economic meltdown, a sex scandal, a diplomatic disaster, mishandling of a natural disaster, or a military catastrophe.

Economic meltdown? That would more likely be choices in the Fed. The Federal Reserve is unlikely to start a depression just to defeat a President. A Greek-style economic problem, as when the IMF dictates that America must devalue its currency, raise taxes, cut the money supply,  cut wages, and cut federal spending?  We're nowhere near that. 

Hurricane season is on the way, but most of the States with vulnerability to a hurricane voted Republican in 2016. The "Big One" in California or an eruption of Mount Rainier in Washington? God help us! Obama may have made sure to give quick and generous aid to very conservative communities in the wake of tornadoes irrespective of the way those communities voted. I wouldn't trust President Trump to give any aid to liberal communities that underwent some natural disaster unless on unacceptable terms.

President Trump has gotten away with much so far. So how does he do it?  He has leaned a trick of extremists and tyrants -- violate the sensibilities of opponents and then fault the opponents for expressing their denials, distress, or disgust. At the extreme think of the propaganda of (eventually convicted Nazi war criminal) Julius Streicher against the Jews. He blamed the Jews for practically anything bad even if there was no logical connection, or accused them of horrible deeds contrary to their character. When they complained, he blamed their 'evil' for opposing the falsehoods that Streicher offered as truth.

Many people fall for this. American politicians have typically avoided playing to this, but Donald Trump is a gross abnormality in American political history. He does not play by the rules that such disparate Presidents as Reagan and Obama would.

Well he got elected but he is not very popular.

[hopper]

I guess these things happen when The Media supports everything you do.

The Media doesn't like Trump. Most members of the media are Democrats.

Yes, billionaires who are owners or majority shareholders in media companies are notoriously liberal Democrats.

If the media reports on a team that hasn't scored a run all year as having a lousy offense, do they have a bias against the local team or are they just reporting a disaster in the making? Now apply that to the presidency and get it through your skull that he is a walking dumpster fire on every conceivable level. He is indefensible. For anyone with common sense of a toad that is. Join the club of those who surpass that level.

Your whining about the media is pathetic, tired, and baseless. Grow up.

And that's directed it pretty much a third of the Forum, not just Hopper.

Badger, The only area that Trump has done good in thus far in his Presidency is in the foreign policy arena. He has failed everywhere else in terms of policy. Still I think the media is really biased against him. I did not vote for him just so you know. I'm just calling it as I see it.