The Official Trump 1.0 Approval Ratings Thread

[Fusionmunster]

Four days into his Presidency and now, more people disapprove of the job Trump is doing. I don't think that's ever happened before. Gallup now has 45% approving Trump, 46% disapproving.

It was better than expected. Four days into trump and it's already amazing. Unexpected for me. If this continues I'm all on board for 2020

At the moment, Trump is at the bare minimum to have a chance at re-election. He has no room to slip, I would not call that amazing.

[Panda Express]

[pbrower2a]

Four days into his Presidency and now, more people disapprove of the job Trump is doing. I don't think that's ever happened before. Gallup now has 45% approving Trump, 46% disapproving.

It was better than expected. Four days into trump and it's already amazing. Unexpected for me. If this continues I'm all on board for 2020

At the moment, Trump is at the bare minimum to have a chance at re-election. He has no room to slip, I would not call that amazing.

According to Nate Silver, incumbent Senators and Governors typically can estimate a gain of 6.5% in vote share from an approval rating at the beginning of a campaign season.  Politicians who do not have a lock on 50% of the vote typically must campaign vigorously to win re-election. Those who have already won an election to their office can turn voters on the margin to their side against the 'average' challenger. Very few incumbents with approval near 50% who have won the seat in a prior election lose their re-election bids; the most blatant example was Senator George Allen, who ran an incompetent and abrasive campaign against an unusually-strong challenger in a bad year for his Party. Note that appointed incumbents often fare badly in their first election, showing that they have never shgown themselves capable of appealing to voters.

The gain from campaigning in a contested election is about the same whether one has an approval rating around 38% or around 62%. Above 62%, one often ends up with a practically-uncontested election, and below about  28% one mostly has incumbents who choose not to run because they see themselves losing, withdraw early, or lose to primary challenges.

So what about politicians with hidden problems, like scandals that had not yet erupted? Those pols generally telegraph fear and pessimism and experience the aversion of political journalists  who have no desire to praise an idol with clay feet.
 
Most Presidents were Governors or Senators, so this model is relevant to the re-election election of incumbent Presidents. When I saw Obama with 45% approval in early 2012 I thought that with as competent a campaign as he ran in 2008 against the usual challenger he would win.    

We are three years away from the start of the Presidential campaign of 2020. We cannot yet know whether there will be a free and fair election; a rigged election would of course make any analysis of voluntary behavior in voting moot. Beware: bad governments that have much gain from corruption and cronyism generally ensure that there will be no honest election capable of sweeping them out. All rules that you know for American political life have been destroyed.  

[pbrower2a]

Four days into his Presidency and now, more people disapprove of the job Trump is doing. I don't think that's ever happened before. Gallup now has 45% approving Trump, 46% disapproving.

It was better than expected. Four days into trump and it's already amazing. Unexpected for me. If this continues I'm all on board for 2020

True. But everything must go right, which means that he can't face:

1. an economic downturn
2. a war that goes badly
3. civil unrest
4. a diplomatic debacle
5. a natural disaster that he mishandles
6. a really-strong Democratic opponent
7. a Third Party or independent challenge from within or near his Party

... and be re-elected.

At the moment, Trump is at the bare minimum to have a chance at re-election. He has no room to slip

One does not project an election almost four years away at this stage. Early in 2009 I thought that Barack Obama would be re-elected in a landslide with 400 or more electoral votes.

[Fusionmunster]

At the moment, Trump is at the bare minimum to have a chance at re-election. He has no room to slip

Suuuuure.

Your confidence is misplaced. 45/45 are not good numbers for a newly elected president, they are not good numbers for an incumbent running for re-election either. You can plug your ears and pretend Trump is in good shape, but you'd just be lying to yourself.

[Tender Branson]

Morning Consult/POLITICO:

46% Approve
37% Disapprove

49% favorable
44% unfavorable

The survey polled 1,992 registered voters from Jan. 20-22 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.

https://morningconsult.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/170103_crosstabs_POLITICO_v3_KD-1.pdf

Rasmussen remains at 57-43 approve today.

[Tender Branson]

Why is Rasmussen such an outlier?

It seems both Rasmussen and Gallup are outliers, but we need more data.

Currently, it looks like Trump starts with a slightly positive approval - but opposition is high (in fact, the highest of any President at the start).

[Tender Branson]

Today's average of 3 tracking polls (Rasmussen, Morning Consult and Gallup) is:

49% approve
42% disapprove

[Bandit3 the Worker]

Haha, Rasmussen, what a joke.

[pbrower2a]

At the moment, Trump is at the bare minimum to have a chance at re-election. He has no room to slip

Suuuuure.

Your confidence is misplaced. 45/45 are not good numbers for a newly elected president, they are not good numbers for an incumbent running for re-election either. You can plug your ears and pretend Trump is in good shape, but you'd just be lying to yourself.

These are horrible numbers contrasted to the numbers for Obama at the same time. Of course the situation is very different. In 2009 the economy seemed to suggest a time about halfway through the meltdown between 1929 and 1932 (it really was analogous) and America had very badly-run wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  The world scene was much safer before Trump than with him, and the economy has more potential for a downside than an upside. 

This is before President  Trump introduces legislation, and it is premature for me to predict how it will go. The pattern is that people who were marginal supporters in the election will usually be disappointed to some extent and that marginal non-supporters will remain skeptical. He can use the phrase "Make America Great Again" however much he wants, but now we get  to find what that means. If it means great only for some economic royalists, then he will be terribly unpopular.

Remember -- Donald Trump the campaigner used a phrase that people could interpret however they  wanted... and I'm guessing that most who liked it interpreted it to mean "Make America great again -- for me". Figure that people who remember the halcyon days of Industrial America when there were plenty of well-paying jobs in mines and factories that supported working-class prosperity, that such meant a return to the time when anyone with a strong body and a good work ethic could get and hold a job which doesn't require one to think too much. That may be impossible. More likely is an economic order in which economic elites grab everything possible and treat the masses badly, but expect everyone to see the plutocratic exploiters as unalloyed benefactors -- or else. "Or else" could mean imprisonment, torture, or death.

We are going to find "for whom" and "how" very soon. Most who did not believe Donald Trump are unlikely to be convinced. Many who did will be disappointed.

[Tender Branson]

Gallup is 46-45 approve today.

So, the average of todays 3 polls (Gallup, Rasmussen and Morning Consult) is 50-42 approve.

[Sorenroy]

Not quite the same thing, but Public Policy Polling's California poll out today showed that on a 33-59 margin, Californians disapprove of the way Trump has handled the transition.

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2015/CaliforniaPollJanuary2017.pdf

[pbrower2a]

PPP, California: first statewide approval poll. It's only of the Presidential transition, but that went badly according to California respondents. 33-59. California did go 61-31 for Hillary Clinton.

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2015/CaliforniaPollJanuary2017.pdf

Revision: it will be treated as favorability.


Favorability:

Probably our best approximation until about March.


Approval:

Not likely useful until March.


Even -- white



Blue, positive and 40-43%  20% saturation
............................ 44-47%  40%  
............................ 48-50%  50%
............................ 51-55%  70%
............................ 56%+     90%

Red, negative and  48-50%  20% (raw approval or favorability)
..........................  44-47%  30%
..........................  40-43%  50%
..........................  35-39%  70%
.......................under  35%  90%

Colors chosen for partisan affiliation.  

[Mr. Morden]

PPP, California: first statewide approval poll. It's only of the Presidential transition, but that went badly according to California respondents.

But that's not his job approval as president.  The poll was taken before he took office, so he didn't have a job approval as president at that point, since he wasn't president.

[pbrower2a]

PPP, California: first statewide approval poll. It's only of the Presidential transition, but that went badly according to California respondents.

But that's not his job approval as president.  The poll was taken before he took office, so he didn't have a job approval as president at that point, since he wasn't president.

True. But it is what he starts with. Of course, California is hardly representative of America. I did not expect to see a poll of California of any kind. 

[Mr. Morden]

PPP, California: first statewide approval poll. It's only of the Presidential transition, but that went badly according to California respondents.

But that's not his job approval as president.  The poll was taken before he took office, so he didn't have a job approval as president at that point, since he wasn't president.

True. But it is what he starts with.

It's what he has on a question that's different from "presidential job approval".  Job approval as president is not job approval in managing the transition.

[pbrower2a]

PPP, California: first statewide approval poll. It's only of the Presidential transition, but that went badly according to California respondents.

But that's not his job approval as president.  The poll was taken before he took office, so he didn't have a job approval as president at that point, since he wasn't president.

True. But it is what he starts with.

It's what he has on a question that's different from "presidential job approval".  Job approval as president is not job approval in managing the transition.

I am not on thin ice. President Trump has been throwing his weight around even before being inaugurated, just as Barack Obama did in late 2008 and the first three weeks of January. Beyond any question, Barack Obama was more effective and got better results.

In any event, the state in question is California, a state that gets polled very rarely. The question is whether I put this in "approval" or "favorability". Second, California is one of the most strongly-Democratic states in America, and the split is very close to the electoral result. If anything, it even reflects a slight gain from the electoral result.

I was hoping to see polls from other states closer to the partisan edge, and the only ones close to the partisan edge for which I have seen any post-election polls are Virginia and North Carolina -- for favorability. Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Florida will be far more interesting.

[Tender Branson]

I agree with Mr. Morden.

pbrower, you should remove that CA poll and only start with polls after his inauguration. This CA poll was clearly done before and shouldn't be included. There are going to be many CA polls anyway (PPIC, Field, SurveyUSA etc.)

[pbrower2a]

I agree with Mr. Morden.

pbrower, you should remove that CA poll and only start with polls after his inauguration. This CA poll was clearly done before and shouldn't be included. There are going to be many CA polls anyway (PPIC, Field, SurveyUSA etc.)

I have revised it to treat it as favorability.

[Gass3268]

PPP:

Q1 Do you approve or disapprove of President Donald Trump’s job performance?
44% Approve ..........................................................
44% Disapprove ......................................................
12% Not sure ..........................................................

Q2 Do you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of Donald Trump? 
44% Favorable ........................................................
50% Unfavorable .................................................... 
7% ....................................................

[pbrower2a]

Contrasting how people expect to see Donald trump against prior Presidents:

Who will be better -- this prior President or Donald Trump:

Who will end up being a better
President, Donald Trump or...

Barack Obama Obama 48-43
 
George W. Bush Bush 40-35

Bill Clinton Clinton 51-41

George H.W. Bush Bush 47-32

Ronald Reagan Reagan 57-17

Jimmy Carter Carter 45-42
 
Gerald Ford Ford 42-37

Richard Nixon Trump 40-31 

Trump has accomplished the incredible feat of making Democrats long for George W. Bush, who they think by a 62-14 spread will end up having been a better President than Trump. The numbers do  show the extent to which it is now Trump's Republican Party though.

 Among GOP voters he beats out George W. Bush 65/15, George H.W. Bush 63/17, and Gerald Ford 71/13. He loses out only to Ronald Reagan and even that's relatively competitive with Reagan getting 45% to Trump's 31%.

“Usually a new President comes in with voters having positive feelings and high
expectations for them,” said Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy Polling.
“Donald Trump comes in with Americans expecting him to be the worst President
in 40 years from Day 1.”

[Gass3268]

Quinnipiac

Approve 36%   
Disapprove 44%

Sad!

[Bandit3 the Worker]

Quinnipiac

Approve 36%   
Disapprove 44%

Sad!

Plus, Quinnipiac is one of the most Republican major pollsters around. Didn't they have Mitt Romney winning in 2012?

[pbrower2a]

Donald Trump is less likely to be an adequate President than to be overthrown in a military coup. I can put him in the same sentence with Washington, Lincoln, and FDR in a comparison ... as an antithesis.  

America just does not do military coups.

The Armed Forces and the intelligence services apparently found President Obama easy to deal with. I never imagined that President Obama would get Osama bin Laden whacked.  

[pbrower2a]

Your confidence is misplaced. 45/45 are not good numbers for a newly elected president, they are not good numbers for an incumbent running for re-election either. You can plug your ears and pretend Trump is in good shape, but you'd just be lying to yourself.

No, I'm not confident about anything. I don't even care about these polls, because they do not matter at this point in time and don't tell us anything about 2020. Anyway, 45% isn't even bad for him, especially when you consider how much of the opposition to him is concentrated in the population centers of California, Illinois, New York, Maryland, etc. (states that he doesn't need in 2020) and how unpopular he was before the election. While it's nice to see some polls, they don't tell us anything about 2020.

Sure. Which is why I would not have been troubled by Barack Obama having a 35% approval rating in Idaho, Oklahoma, or Wyoming. You know as well as I do that polls of Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and California say little about 2020 because nobody has a reasonable expectation of Donald Trump winning any one of those states in a free and fair election.

But -- Virginia has been a swing state in the last three elections, and President Trump is doing badly there. I also see one for North Carolina, and North Carolina voters seem not to like him now.