The Official Trump 1.0 Approval Ratings Thread

[Virginiá]

I think GOPers are dramatically overestimating their new superpowers. If they miscalculate and push Medicare privatization or Social Security Reform, combined with an already hyper-charged left, there's no reason to think they hold the House in 2018. They could also give a ton of cover to Ruby Red State Dems  in the Senate. 

This is what I've been thinking. Trump himself really is not that popular and once his meager bounce wears off, Republicans really won't be in a position where it is even remotely safe to push policies such as Medicare/Social Security privatization. The modern day GOP is heavily reliant on older voters and such initiatives would be toxic with them. Unpopular Trump + GOP overreach in 2018 is a recipe for disaster. Maybe they don't lose the Senate and possibly even make a net gain, but the House and oodles of state legislatures/offices could be swept away in a backlash. Gerrymandering and natural packing has made things harder for Democrats and probably given them a lower ceiling in terms of seats, but it has not made the GOP invincible.

They would really be better off playing it safe for the first 2 years so they can get a full term of a unified federal government. Save the crazy stuff for after the midterms.

[Virginiá]

Then if they save the crazy for 19, what will they have to do in 20? ...of course than relying on the Democrats dying on their own.

Nothing really I guess. 4 years of Trump is likely going to be toxic for Republicans, so if they insist on pushing something as unpopular as privatization, they might as well wait until the last 2 years and not right before midterms where they the incumbent party almost always loses seats. They can use the first 2 years to push a bunch of relatively smaller policies/budget items.

There is no good time for that kind of policy. If they insist on doing it, it's going to cost them in the next election.

[Virginiá]

So yes, most Americans like Trump, get over it.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/trump_favorableunfavorable-5493.html

Favorable average: 41.8%
Unfavorable average: 49.9%

Most Americans don't like Trump. This was true before election day and after election day. Even if you wanted, for your "polls were wrong" factor, you could tack on a few extra favorable points and he would still be more unpopular than popular. Most national polls were simply not off by enough here to make a case that he is actually more liked than not.

Frankly, the fact that you have to sit here and cherry pick polls to prove people like him should be a red flag on its own.

[Virginiá]

Let's hope the Dems won't get help through voter fraud. But I doubt that Scott Foval and Bob Creamer are out of business. And I doubt that you have a problem with them ;-)

Your "voter supression" is nothing more than installing rules to make voter fraud harder - rules which are common in every European country.

Ending same-day registration and cutting early voting does nothing to prevent fraud. SDR already requires IDs and something like a utility bill to prove your residency, and afaik a number of states verify the address with a mailer right away and throw out the vote if they don't get a response. There is no decent argument to not have SDR, or to cut an existing program. We're not in the fking 1950s anymore. Technology allows safe implementation of this.

Early voting is no more a cause of fraud than election day voting, unless you believe that more voting = more fraud and thus is bad, in which case I'd recommend you reevaluate your entire idea of democracy and elections, because forcing in-person voting to a single workday, often during inconvenient hours for working class people, is absurd.

Voter id - look, I'm not going to argue this one. If Republicans made strong efforts to get everyone an ID, I'd have less of a problem. However, there is no proof voter ID is even needed. At least no proof that more fraud is occurring than citizens being disenfranchised.

And that's the gist of most of these laws making voting harder. Republicans say its to prevent "rampant fraud," yet they can't show us that any mass fraud is happening. A few (literally few) cases here and there doesn't justify shrinking the electorate by sometimes 1% - 6% or more.

Finally - why don't you think of voting restrictions as business regulations. You can't just keep piling on all these regulations, or else you make conducting proper business (voting) harder, thus reducing the volume of business (voting). By constantly piling on unnecessary regulations, you are picking winners and losers based on who is more likely to still vote despite increased regulations, which just happens to often be older, white, more wealthy conservatives. Even a Republican should be able to understand this - OH wait, they do. That's why we have these laws!

[Virginiá]

I fail to see how he goes below ~35%. There's a certain sect of people in this country who will allow Trump to say or do literally anything, and that's a mandate Bush didn't even have.

I do care more about his state-by-state approval because it's true that a majority of his dissenters live in deep blue states.

Personally, I see a lot of situations that could cause him to go lower. I think he has a hardened base of support around what you said, but not unbreakable. To name a few, a recession that has noticeable effects on the lives of that 35%, a massive corruption scandal with oodles of evidence, or perhaps him serving 2 terms and eventually after years of failing to do anything about their problems, generating 5-6 years worth of controversies in addition to the typical grievances that 2-termers build up, all could probably see him go lower since his ceiling appears to be very low.

However, I should say that even if 35% was guaranteed, that is still pretty awful. If that was his approval rating in 2018 and/or 2020, I'd be pretty scared for my job (or majorities) if I was a House or state Republican in a state/seat a Democrat could even conceivably win under the right conditions.

[Virginiá]

He always polled badly, even the day he won over 300 electoral votes.

Yes, and he ran against a candidate who was almost as disliked as him, and trusted even less (somehow). Trump isn't some magical politician whose unpopularity is irrelevant. It just so happens that when you pit two unliked candidates against each other, that attribute seems to cancel out in that race.

[Virginiá]

2/4/2017:
Disapproval 53%
Approval 42%

Gallup.

Fun fact... Ronald Reagan had a 42% approval rating, or worse, between July and October 1982.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections,_1982

Nooo no no, see, Trump is different. Normal rules don't apply, all GOP midterms will be like 2002, etc etc.

[Virginiá]

Hmmm.... that "polarization" argument is not holding up so well.

The polarization argument in this context is really just a cop-out, imo. Let's take the often-cited (by TNVol too I think?) number of "45%" that, say, Republicans can always count on. If Republicans get 45% in the House PV, odds are Democrats are probably bringing in 51% - 53%. By House standards that is basically a landslide loss, and in the range of what Democrats need to take over the chamber. If you look back in history, rarely have parties gotten less than 44% in the House PV, and it wasn't necessary to go lower to lose big (but it did happen sometimes, like 1974, and it caused huge losses).

I think the polarization argument applies more to presidential races, where the intense focus on 2 well-defined candidates has a more powerful polarizing effect. The 20th century was filled to the brim with landslide elections, and polarization today largely prevents landslides like '36, '64, '72, '84, etc, and that makes it appear more substantial than it really is.

But, for the record, I don't really believe in the "45% always" rule. I just wanted to point out that in elections for the House, it doesn't really change anything anyway.

-

Edit: As for the geographical sorting issue, I put this down:

www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/house-2016-how-a-democratic-wave-could-happen/



I'd a venture a guess that if Obama could have won roughly that many GOP-held districts with a 5-7 pt. PV win, a Democratic House PV win in the same range (obviously with some changes due to the suburban/rural sorting seen under Clinton/Trump) could probably achieve similar, even if maybe somewhat weaker effects. We'd just need to recruit some pretty good candidates and hope the GOP brand is sufficiently garbage to get voters to toss out incumbents.

[Virginiá]

Why are we still using RV's right now?

Isn't that how it always goes? LV screens need to be used before an election, which isn't for a long time, so the best way to go right now is registered voters. Or, I'd think anyway.

[Virginiá]

No, never, nobody else comes even close. I think George Bush Jr. had roughly 25% disapproval on inauguration day and that's the next closest. And nobody since Gallup started polling with Truman started with their approval under 50%. George Bush Sr. started at 51% but didn't go under 50% until his last year, and Bill Clinton went under 50% job approval a little over 100 days in. No president has begun their term in office with approval under 50% and disapproval above 45% (or even above 25%) before Trump.

Plus, as I recall, his actual disapproval rating was in the single digits. He had a lot of room to grow. Trump has started with over half the country not liking him / not approving of him, and in some polls something like 40%+ strongly disapproving.

The funny thing is, Trump hasn't even gotten to the part of his presidency where things start going wrong and supporters start becoming disillusioned. Eventually the economy is going to have some hiccups, or there will be some new high-profile foreign policy blunder, or he'll push/sign unpopular policies into law (of which we know the GOP has plenty), or he'll get embroiled in a scandal - something he especially seems prone to, or any number of things, and like many presidents before him, he'll find even he has new lows.

I think his best bet is to wish every night for a 90s-level economic boom (somehow) with high wage growth, because otherwise it's hard for me personally to see how he gets above water for any prolonged period of time.

[Virginiá]

Finally we continue to find that unhappiness with Trump- and with Congressional Republicans- could help Democrats to make big gains in 2018. Democrats lead 49/41 on the generic Congressional ballot. That's partially a product of Trump's unpopularity but also an outgrowth of Paul Ryan (35/47 approval), Mitch McConnell (23/52 approval), and Congress as a whole (16/68 approval) being unpopular in their own rights.

Now those are the numbers I want to see!

+8 lead on the generic congressional ballot is higher than all but 2 of the generic polls Democrats got in the 2016 race, with one of those 2 polls being +8 and the other +10.

Although as I recall one or two other generic polls posted in this thread over the past couple weeks showed somewhat lower numbers, so I won't give any of this much stock until I see months of consistent high single digit or double digit leads for Democrats in the generic poll. If that happens, I would definitely think a backlash is brewing.

[Virginiá]

I'm not bothered by this. Approvals are mid-40s to low 50s depending on the polls, which were all off for two years with him, and he always polls bad anyways. Unless his name is on the ballot.

Again, reading this forum gives false predictors. Going by the posts on this forum, 2014 was going to be a decent year for Dems, Jack Conway was going to be Gov of KY, and 2016 was going to be a DEM landslide. Why believe you now?

Those are weak, flimsy excuses. Not all the polls were off, and many national ones were very close or only marginally off the MoE near the end. In fact, during October, given the major events that were constantly breaking, it's probably fair to say that many of those polls were more or less correct but later developments shifted support back to Trump.

And if you think Trump's unpopularity doesn't matter just because he won the election, then I think you're ignoring a very crucial part of the election: his opponent was as disliked as he was, and trusted even less. Him winning doesn't mean his favorables/approvals mean nothing - it means that between 2 candidates with near-equally terrible favorables, the result is not always the candidate with the worst favorables.

But, whatever. If you want to use "but Trump won" as an excuse to ignore approval ratings/favorables and basically any negative polls for the next 2-4 years, then go ahead.

[Virginiá]

That's why I don't get why people are acting as if Trump's popularity is now "crashing".  He was already unpopular on election day.

If anything, he actually still remains more favorable today than he was prior to November 8th. I think when "crashing" is used, it is mainly referring to the fact that he had a very slight honeymoon (at least in a fair number of polls), then quite quickly came right back down.

Honestly, for right now, I believe his current range - anywhere from 40 - 44 / 48 - 54, is where he will probably remain for many months. I do not believe his core supporters will begin breaking ranks until Trump has trudged on for a while and continued to fail to make any progress on improving their lives, bringing jobs back or achieving most of the things he said he would. I do wholeheartedly believe a sizable number of people will become disillusioned at some point, though. It happens to most presidents.

In other words, to get him lower than what he has now might require a war of attrition.

[Virginiá]

Average percentage point change is -7.7 which would predict a midterm approval of 35.7%

img

https://twitter.com/PollsAndVotes/status/830802165887295489

Presidential approval and midterm performance of incumbent parties, 1950-2014. Trump's numbers (#fakepolls) will matter for the GOP.

img

https://twitter.com/drjennings/status/829079666631835648

And of course that 1 point showing around -10 to -12 seats @ low-40s approvals will be used as proof that Trump and Republicans will have a tremendous midterm.

[Virginiá]

New generations have different concerns than the older generations. The Millennial generation is often heavily in debt with on the whole little savings. Debtors tend to be on the political Left  because they want inflation to gut their burdens and an overheated economy to make earning their way out of debt much easier.

I get what you are saying in the rest of the post, but this part - about "Debtors/lefties wanting inflation" - I don't get it. I don't think I've ever heard any Millennial liberal say they want inflation.

[Virginiá]

This only strengthens my view that Virginia's November elections could very well be pretty bad for Republicans in both statewide races and the House of Delegates. Those are truly abysmal numbers, and worse yet, Trump only performs well among white voters who are less likely to vote than their college educated counterparts.

And this is during the time where Trump should be enjoying some of his best numbers. It could very well get worse for him in Virginia by November.

[Virginiá]

My point is that if the Democrats lose both MT and GA despite polls saying that 60% of the country disapproves of Trump, they're in trouble (or the polls are wrong). Of course the margin will also tell us a lot.

Eh, I mean we are talking about low turnout special elections here, very soon in the Trump presidency. Unpopular or not, it may not be long enough for him to drag down on the GOP brand. Not that I don't think an unpopular president wouldn't drag down their party - I absolutely do, but I'm not entirely sure it is possible to happen within a span of months after taking office (although you could add on the last 6 months of 2016 too, I suppose)

If Democrats don't win any of these, I'm not considering it much of anything. I'm waiting for a higher turnout general election where enough time will have passed for Trump to seriously exhaust the public's patience and/or for the GOP to pass numerous packages of unpopular policy. It will really take close to a year or more for that. This November's off-off year elections would still be a good test, assuming he is just as (or more) unpopular as today.

[Virginiá]

Gallup:
40 (-1)
54 (+1)

Where'd you see that?

http://www.gallup.com/topic/politics.aspx

That seems to be a weekly average.

Here is for weekly averages:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/203198/presidential-approval-ratings-donald-trump.aspx

Here is for daily updates:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/201617/gallup-daily-trump-job-approval.aspx

[Virginiá]

They also poll the generic House ballot here:

Dems 46%
GOP 41%

It's really early, of course, but a 5 point popular vote win wouldn't be enough for the Dems to take back the House, given the GOP's structural advantage in how the district lines are drawn.

5% is roughly where it was at for much of 2016. Just like with Hillary, it imploded as Trump surged in the end. Five points is simply not enough, and doesn't indicate people are turning on Republicans - yet. Once we start seeing double digit numbers - even low, like 10, 11 points, or consistently high-single digits (8-9) on a regular basis, I think that is when the GOP should worry.

[Virginiá]

Looks like Trump's negatives are just about synchronized across polling outfits now. What a mandate he has!

[Virginiá]

Looks like Trump's negatives are just about synchronized across polling outfits now. What a mandate he has!

Well he did win the election.

Pfft, you know what I mean. An actual mandate is different than just winning. He lost the popular vote by 2%+ and barely squeaked by in FL, PA, WI and MI - states he needed to win.

In an election between two candidates as disliked as Clinton/Trump, just barely winning like Trump is far from a mandate of any kind.

[Virginiá]

Amazing how fast his approvals are imploding. Though, I suppose this is a natural consequence when you take office already in the hole, ratings-wise.

I'd love to know what his approval ratings will be in October 2018.

[Virginiá]

Gallup:
38 (+3)/57(+2) Oh no here comes his momentum back/s

And somewhere out there someone is probably thinking that. It definitely is amusing how Trump is losing so much that he probably will move the "successful approval" goalposts somewhere in the 40s - the only numbers he seems able to sustain for any reasonable period of time (so far)

[Virginiá]

McClatchy / Marist (3/22 - 3/27)
Approve: 38%
Disapprove: 51%

Generic congressional ballot:
Democrats: 47%
Republicans: 38%

Around D+9 is when the House has a chance of flipping, so this is good this early on.

It is, and this is good news indeed. While the generic ballot technically isn't for state races, it still represents a rather broad view of how the public feels about one party over the other. If these numbers hold in 2017, it could be pretty bad for the GOP in NJ/VA.

However, personally I feel like these numbers are still "reactionary" and not durable. Trump has been under a never-ending stream of scandal or generally bad news coverage, so it's not surprising his approvals/the GOP's numbers are down. I'm not convinced Democratic support on the generic ballot has reached a durable state, where the public is so fed up with Republicans/Trump that almost nothing that is plausible can happen to help the GOP rebound in time. I think it's possible to get there before Nov Oct-Nov 2018, but it'll take at least a year+ rather than a few months.

[Virginiá]

A new ACA poll shows 61% of voters will blame Trump an the GOP if Obamacare "imploded" only 31% would blame Obama an dems https://mobile.twitter.com/undefined/status/849376829802729473/photo/1

That sounds about right. Whatever happens to the ACA, it is on Republicans at this point, whether one thinks that is fair or not. They can't pass the buck - not after all their rhetoric over the past 8 years, and the fact that they have unified control now.

Trump can *try* and dodge this bullet, but it won't work. That is the downside of holding the White House, and worse yet, having unified control. When voters need someone to blame, they often look to the top.