Trump approval ratings thread 1.1

[pbrower2a]

I'm interested in seeing how Trump's response to Harvey is going to be perceived. He hasn't made any obvious missteps yet (aside from the Friday news dump, but the whole point of that was for the hurricane to drown out those stories, which is probably going to happen)

True. I seem to recall a west wing episode where the press office calls Friday "trash day" and suggests that Fridays are the best day to dump unfavorable news stories, because most people are focused on their weekend. Add in the hurricane ...

The hurricane will not be the lead story in Arizona newspapers. Resignations of Sebastian Gorka and Andy Hemming are well-timed...

This President has enabled right-wing extremists, violators of human rights, cronies, and crooks. He has used his office to enrich his business interests.

It is fortunate that there is no Trump Tower in Houston, San Antonio, or Austin. Were there, then you can just imagine where the centers for government activity to get aid to the hurricane-plagued area would be. (Dallas is too far away to be relevant, and I Googled "Dallas" and "Trump Hotel" as I did with Austin, Houston, and San Antonio each with "Trump Hotel".

That fiction reflects reality should little surprise us. Fiction must have a logic far stronger than reality just to make sense.

[Hindsight was 2020]

I'm interested in seeing how Trump's response to Harvey is going to be perceived. He hasn't made any obvious missteps yet (aside from the Friday news dump, but the whole point of that was for the hurricane to drown out those stories, which is probably going to happen)

Except he has and no one realizes it yet but FEMA is horrible understaffed

[Devout Centrist]

Fridays as dump day made sense pre-social media. Much of it would just slip unnoticed. But today? It doesn't matter.

[American2020]

Part II:

Key points from Nate Silver:

Note: bold material and information in tabular form or the chart are directly from Nate Silver:

Proposition No. 1: It’s easy to fight to a draw when your approval rating is only 37 percent.

Before his bungled response to the violence in Charlottesville (a fascist pig driving his car into counter-protesters, killing a pretty white girl, which is the worst thing that he could do for the image of his cause), the President's approval rating was already very poor. It's like the 2003 Detroit Kittens baseball team (which challenged the 1962 New York Mess [40-120] for being the worst team in the recent era of baseball [43-119]) having a ten-game losing streak -- who notices? People who thought Donald Trump awful before his bungled response to events in Charlottesville simply had more cause to dislike his Presidency.

Proposition No. 2: Be wary of claims that Trump has hit his approval rating ‘floor’ — so far, his numbers have been declining, not holding steady.

Something that I didn't notice. Of course there is statistical noise, and I am not going to take much notice of the difference between polls by difference  in approval ratings between 40-57 and 37-58, whether between two different pollsters and their different methodologies and between two different days. Either difference is within the usual margin of error, so I don't see the immediate difference.  


But there is a huge difference between a 44% approval rating and a 37% approval rating over seven months. The trend line for this President is unambiguously downward, and such a difference is almost twice the margin of error.

Proposition No. 3: If Trump does have a floor, it’s probably in the 20s and not in the 30s.

Approval ratings for the President of the time have gone into the 20s, including Truman (22% at times in his second term), Nixon (25% at the time of his resignation), and Dubya (24%). With Nixon the problem was moral turpitude; approval of Harry S. Truman rose and fell with the latitude of the front line in the Korean War; economic events suggesting a reprise of the economic meltdown that resembled the first stage of the Great Depression.

Americans aren't hurting from an economic meltdown, and there is no ongoing calamity in the Korean Peninsula -- yet. President Trump gets to ride the good will that his above-average predecessor created even as he excoriates that predecessor. But let the Dow lose 50% of its market value or (God forbid!!!) a nutty leader in North Korea turn even one large Japanese or South Korean city is turned from a vibrant urban area into a smoldering, uninhabited, radioactive ghost town with many of its denizens turned into ghosts -- and just imagine what that does to the attractiveness of President Trump as a leader. The accusations of collusion of his campaign with the Russians (intelligence services or the Russian Mafia) are either without foundation or are well known to people (federal prosecutors and courts, the CIA, or the FBI) who have good cause to not publicize what they already know -- because they can use these to great harm to the President or those connected more effectively in a court of law than in the public domain.

He will not be able to put the blame on liberals or upon dissident conservatives with whom he never got along. Such people might want to be rid of him even if such requires a military coup. I cannot say at what level of disapproval President  puts him in such danger. Neither Truman, Dubya, nor even Nixon was anywhere near the megalomaniac that President Trump is. At the worst points of approval, the end was nigh for Truman (he was not going to run for a third term),  Nixon (he resigned in disgrace), and Dubya (close to the end of his catastrophic second term.  Americans could wait for an imminent end of the Presidencies of either of those three Presidents.  Such an end is not in sight for President Trump, which makes a big difference. There were obviously no approval polls for Herbert Hoover in 1932, but we can just imagine how those would have been in October 1932.

Impeachment? The Democrats hold all the cards on that. They would be delighted to act in concert with a large minority within the GOP to remove this President, but only if the successor is a comparative moderate who solves more problems than he  leaves intact. Mike Pence, even more illiberal than Donald Trump, would have to step down first and allow someone like Mitt Romney or Susan Collins become Vice-President and in turn '46'.

We have no quick and easy solution for Donald Trump within our Constitutional framework.

The Founding Fathers established a political system predicated upon a wise electorate in which probity was an overwhelming norm, one in which people voted generally on the basis of morality and competence of the choices that they had. Americans could have voted for a Richard Nixon without knowing of his political demons, and they got away with it. A near-majority of the  American electorate voted for Donald Trump even though his flaws (he was no more reactionary than Ronald Reagan) were glaringly obvious. We are less likely to get away with our political order intact with Trump as President than we were with Nixon.    

Proposition No. 4: Expect bigger approval rating changes from issues that cut across partisan lines.

Effective Presidents get legislative successes even if a near-majority of Americans dislike the agenda, as with Ronald Reagan or Barack Obama. Ronald Reagan won a landslide re-election in 1984 with about 58% of the popular vote, and Obama might have gotten about 58% of the popular vote in 2012 had he not faced (1) a challenger as astute as Mitt Romney  and (2) racial attitudes that cost him on the net  a few per cent of the popular vote. There were more people unwilling to vote for any black person than those more likely to get to the polls to vote for the first American President with some presumed African origin than for anyone else. But Obama still won. Everybody loves a winner; President Trump has practically no legislative successes so far.

Donald Trump hates President Obama viscerally -- and he is no Ronald Reagan.

Proposition No. 5: Be especially wary of expecting big changes in Trump’s approval rating from ‘cultural’ issues.

America is already severely divided along 'cultural' lines, and there are no further 'cultural' values that he can offend. He can make catastrophic blunders in foreign policy. Presidents Emeritus are often the best people to get the current President out of a nasty scrape, as Bill Clinton found Jimmy Carter useful for an ugly situation in Haiti. We have five living Presidents Emeritus (Carter, the elder Bush, Clinton, the younger Bush, and Obama), but age precluding the ability of two to solve any problems, ill health negating Clinton as a solution to anything, the younger Bush a near-recluse to some very bad choices as President, then the only viable such person to meet a danger related to foreign policy is Obama. But the current President considers his Predecessor something close to being an Antichrist, which make him unavailable for now.

Proposition No. 6: Expect bigger changes when Trump’s behavior is truly surprising or defies promises he made to voters.

President Trump made promises, and his non-successes in forcing legislation that hurts the living standards of most people. This is exactly the President and Congress that could, if given the chance, shift federal taxation from income to consumption, eviscerate labor unions with a national right-to-work (for starvation wages) law if not outlaw labor unions outright and abolish the minimum wage and hour laws established in the 1930s so that American workers could get the dubious benefits of living as badly as they did in the 1920s. His failure at undoing Obamacare has kept him from going on to even-more-unpopular parts of an agenda of the Master Class that he pretended to oppose while a candidate for President.

Donald Trump is as nasty a capitalist pig as any Marxist stereotype can offer. He did make promises of jobs, but should the economy go into the tank, then his biggest promises to the white working class which never got a real recovery from the Panic of 2008 end up a stark and unforgivable failure.

Approval ratings for the Presidents 216 days into their administrations and the subsequent election beginning with Truman were:  

Truman  33 40
Eisenhower 62 68
Kennedy 62 (assassinated)
LBJ 74 74 (identical based upon the timing of the JFK assassination and Election 1964)
Nixon 62 57
Ford NR 44
Carter 44 38
Reagan 42 58
Bush I  55 33
Clinton 47 55
Bush II 62 48
Obama 45 50

Those with approval ratings above 44% won; Ford barely lost, probably because he had no idea of how to run so much as a statewide campaign for election. Bush I had no idea of what to offer as a Second Act, Carter had a disastrous Presidency, and Truman had nine political lives going into 1945 and expended eight of those by the autumn of 1953. Dubya had gotten away with a lots of mistakes as late as 2004 and got away with them and barely got re-elected; Obama might have won re-election by a huge margin instead of a bare margin had it not been for we-all-know-what, and the rest won re-election with at least 370 electoral votes.

Reagan took his lumps early and recovered, which might be a promising analogue for President Trump in 2020. But Reagan at least solved problems that his predecessor could not solve. Donald Trump is not the new Ronald Reagan.

Furthermore he does nothing to attract his base, contrary to Reagan, Clinton and many others.
http://www.jsonline.com/story/news/blogs/wisconsin-voter/2017/08/25/donald-trump-has-squandered-chance-raise-populais-now-just-unpopular-he-2016-campaign-which-isnt-goo/601436001/

[GeorgiaModerate]

Gallup, 8/25

Approve 35% (+1)
Disapprove 60% (-)

Now three consecutive days with disapproval of 60%.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Gallup, 8/25

Approve 35% (+1)
Disapprove 60% (-)

Now three consecutive days with disapproval of 60%.

Four out of Trump's seven 60+% Gallup disapprovals came out in this week.

[pbrower2a]

Furthermore he does nothing to attract his base, contrary to Reagan, Clinton and many others.
http://www.jsonline.com/story/news/blogs/wisconsin-voter/2017/08/25/donald-trump-has-squandered-chance-raise-populais-now-just-unpopular-he-2016-campaign-which-isnt-goo/601436001/

Even Jimmy Carter tried to cut into the early vote against him. Had he won over the sorts of people who would vote for Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996 but voted for Ford in 1976, then he would have been re-elected. It is hard to determine an ideological difference between Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.

Jimmy Carter was simply an ineffective President, but far from the vile person that Donald Trump is. Carter attacked the economic mess that Nixon had started, but to be successful at that he would need to implement economic policies that hurt the usual constituencies of the Democratic Party. Carter could never do that; Reagan had no qualms about doing so. The hostage situation in Iran ground him down until Reagan could win in a landslide similar in the Electoral College to what FDR did to Hoover.

Like Reagan, Trump has no qualms about hurting those who did not vote for him. Such is enough to have practically ensured that he would do little better in 2020 than in 2016. But he is hurting his mass base.

With the Marist polls of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin and another of Arizona I can predict based upon disapproval ratings alone that Donald Trump will lose everything that he lost in 2016 and those four states.

[GeorgiaModerate]

Gallup, 8/26:

Approve 35% (nc)
Disapprove 60% (nc)

4th consecutive day at 60% disapproval.

[pbrower2a]

Gallup, 8/26:

Approve 35% (nc)
Disapprove 60% (nc)

4th consecutive day at 60% disapproval.

Stable. The President's credibility is gone from the political center and the left. Conservative opposition is building against him.   I am not predicting that 60% of the American people will vote for a Democratic nominee for President. In 2020 we will see at most a 55-45 split between liberals and conservatives for President and other elective offices -- but much of the conservative vote will be for an independent or Third Party nominee. 

[Adam Griffin]

Obama's 08 margins are probably still the max a Democrat can hope for - unless there is a bunch of funny business with nominal turnout. The GOP basically has a base of 62 million voters (give or take a couple million) that sticks with them regardless of what happens. All of the wild swings nationally over the past 15 years basically have hinged on how many people turn out and vote for Democrats rather than Republicans. Bush got 62m in 2004, McCain got 60, Romney got 61 and Trump got 63.

If you had another 10 million people turn out to vote and they went overwhelmingly Democratic, then that Democrat might be able to hit 55%. There are also third parties to contend with, depending on the climate of the election; a 55-45 two-way vote might be more possible.

[GlobeSoc]

Obama's 08 margins are probably still the max a Democrat can hope for - unless there is a bunch of funny business with nominal turnout. The GOP basically has a base of 62 million voters (give or take a couple million) that sticks with them regardless of what happens. All of the wild swings nationally over the past 15 years basically have hinged on how many people turn out and vote for Democrats rather than Republicans. Bush got 62m in 2004, McCain got 60, Romney got 61 and Trump got 63.

If you had another 10 million people turn out to vote and they went overwhelmingly Democratic, then that Democrat might be able to hit 55%. There are also third parties to contend with, depending on the climate of the election; a 55-45 two-way vote might be more possible.

those 62 million are old tho

[Adam Griffin]

Obama's 08 margins are probably still the max a Democrat can hope for - unless there is a bunch of funny business with nominal turnout. The GOP basically has a base of 62 million voters (give or take a couple million) that sticks with them regardless of what happens. All of the wild swings nationally over the past 15 years basically have hinged on how many people turn out and vote for Democrats rather than Republicans. Bush got 62m in 2004, McCain got 60, Romney got 61 and Trump got 63.

If you had another 10 million people turn out to vote and they went overwhelmingly Democratic, then that Democrat might be able to hit 55%. There are also third parties to contend with, depending on the climate of the election; a 55-45 two-way vote might be more possible.

those 62 million are old tho

They were old in 2004 as well. The GOP is obviously replacing every voter they're losing with a new one.

[Brittain33]

They were old in 2004 as well. The GOP is obviously replacing every voter they're losing with a new one.

In 2004, the main stat for gloating was Bush winning 97 of the 100 fastest-growing counties, and of the other 3, one of them was urban Clark County, Nevada. That kind of story relies on middle-aged parents.

[KingSweden]

They were old in 2004 as well. The GOP is obviously replacing every voter they're losing with a new one.

In 2004, the main stat for gloating was Bush winning 97 of the 100 fastest-growing counties, and of the other 3, one of them was urban Clark County, Nevada. That kind of story relies on middle-aged parents.

What's the comp on 2016? Have to imagine "fastest-growing" has trended D

[GeorgiaModerate]

Gallup, 8/27

Approve 35 (nc)
Disapprove 60 (nc)

Very stable the last few days.

[Brittain33]

They were old in 2004 as well. The GOP is obviously replacing every voter they're losing with a new one.

In 2004, the main stat for gloating was Bush winning 97 of the 100 fastest-growing counties, and of the other 3, one of them was urban Clark County, Nevada. That kind of story relies on middle-aged parents.

What's the comp on 2016? Have to imagine "fastest-growing" has trended D

That's a really good question. Fast-growing counties were growing faster in 2004 than in 2016, I believe, because more people moved back then.

[Bandit3 the Worker]

There's also the issue of fraud in the census. The 2000 census deliberately undercounted Democratic-leaning demographics and places.

[Santander]

There's also the issue of fraud in the census. The 2000 census deliberately undercounted Democratic-leaning demographics and places.

That damn Republican Bill Clinton...

[Tintrlvr]

They were old in 2004 as well. The GOP is obviously replacing every voter they're losing with a new one.

In 2004, the main stat for gloating was Bush winning 97 of the 100 fastest-growing counties, and of the other 3, one of them was urban Clark County, Nevada. That kind of story relies on middle-aged parents.

What's the comp on 2016? Have to imagine "fastest-growing" has trended D

That's a really good question. Fast-growing counties were growing faster in 2004 than in 2016, I believe, because more people moved back then.

At a glance, it's still a very Republican group but probably somewhat less so, percentage-wise, than in 2004.

First Clinton County is #15 Osceola County, Florida. I also see #18 Fort Bend County, Texas, #57 Loudoun County, Virginia and #91 Broomfield County, Colorado, but there are probably a couple of others I missed. Edit: Also noticed #21 Gallatin County, Montana and #89 Los Alamos County, New Mexico on a second look-through.

A lot of the bigger ones (especially in Texas, where most of the big, fast-growing counties are concentrated) had huge Clinton swings/trends in 2016 though stayed Republican (such as #3 Hays County, Texas, #11 Forsyth County, Georgia, #14 Williamson County, Texas, #24 Montgomery County, Texas, #28 Denton County, Texas and #68 Collin County, Texas).

https://factfinder.census.gov/bkmk/table/1.0/en/PEP/2016/PEPANNGRC.US06

[GeorgiaModerate]

SurveyMonkey, Aug 18-24, 9172 adults (change from Aug 4-10)

Approve 39 (-1)
Disapprove 59 (+1)

[Unapologetic Chinaperson]

Gallup, 8/27

Approve 35 (nc)
Disapprove 60 (nc)

Very stable the last few days.

Updating some toplines for todays poll:

Trump's approval rating among people under 30 years old has fallen to a new low of 20% via Gallup.

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So much for the idea that Generation Z will become the next Hitler Youth.

[Dr Oz Lost Party!]

I don't know if it really matters but his numbers among Liberal Republicans has been plummeting since day one.

January 21st: 75%

August 28th: 58%

-17 point shift.

(Gallup)

[Phony Moderate]

Gallup, 8/27

Approve 35 (nc)
Disapprove 60 (nc)

Very stable the last few days.

Updating some toplines for todays poll:

Trump's approval rating among people under 30 years old has fallen to a new low of 20% via Gallup.

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So much for the idea that Generation Z will become the next Hitler Youth.

If one accepts the definition of millennials as being those born between 1980 and 2000 then Gen Z isn't included in these numbers.

[Virginiá]

Given that the Millennial generation is often judged as ending somewhere between 96 - 2001, the best time to see where generation z is going to end up is 2020. At that point, we'll have a handful of years in the 18 - 24 group as being genz, the number of years depending on when you think Millennials end. If they really trended more Republican, the 18-24 group should lean more Republican in 2020 compared to 2016. It's not enough for the Democrat to do a little worse, as even while Clinton performed worse among 18-24 year olds, Trump also performed worse than Romney, which was already pretty low.

Anything before then would be too ambiguous. Personally, I think that even if generation z ends up more conservative than Millennials, it won't be an immediate drop in vote share for Democrats. It would probably be a slow-ish decline, and highly doubtful it starts anytime soon. Republicans need to re-brand to make inroads with young minorities (or massive inroads with young whites) for that to happen. If it does, it'll probably be the tail-end of the genz that gets more Republican-leaning.

[Unapologetic Chinaperson]

Given that the Millennial generation is often judged as ending somewhere between 96 - 2001, the best time to see where generation z is going to end up is 2020. At that point, we'll have a handful of years in the 18 - 24 group as being genz, the number of years depending on when you think Millennials end. If they really trended more Republican, the 18-24 group should lean more Republican in 2020 compared to 2016. It's not enough for the Democrat to do a little worse, as even while Clinton performed worse among 18-24 year olds, Trump also performed worse than Romney, which was already pretty low.

Anything before then would be too ambiguous. Personally, I think that even if generation z ends up more conservative than Millennials, it won't be an immediate drop in vote share for Democrats. It would probably be a slow-ish decline, and highly doubtful it starts anytime soon. Republicans need to re-brand to make inroads with young minorities (or massive inroads with young whites) for that to happen. If it does, it'll probably be the tail-end of the genz that gets more Republican-leaning.

I think it'll be pretty hard for the GOP to take the "massive inroads with young whites (specifically males)" route, by going full-on alt-right at least. One of the reasons that the alt-right got so popular as it did was because it was a rebellion from both the political establishment and the cultural norms of our times. Now that the alt-right has essentially BECOME the establishment, and an incompetent and terrible establishment at that, it'll be harder for young whites to be enamored with the alt-right brand. (Which is one way a Trump victory might be better long-term than a Clinton victory; imagine how much the alt-right's popularity would skyrocket if she was the president).