Trump approval ratings thread 1.1

[Stranger in a strange land]

While I'm glad that Trump's approvals have collapsed so quickly, I find it legitimately distressing that 38% or so of the American public still approves of him. What does he need to do!?!?

[Gass3268]

While I'm glad that Trump's approvals have collapsed so quickly, I find it legitimately distressing that 38% or so of the American public still approves of him. What does he need to do!?!?

Probably need a recession.

[I Won - Get Over It]

Did he hit the rock bottom?

There are so many news right now. We'll also have FBI appointee, speech on Islam, CBO-score while Russia-gate is unfolding so quickly. If that won't "work" nothing will.

We'll soon know
 

[Tintrlvr]

While I'm glad that Trump's approvals have collapsed so quickly, I find it legitimately distressing that 38% or so of the American public still approves of him. What does he need to do!?!?

Probably need a recession.

Or something that will ideologically turn off conservatives. In 2006-7, Bush's approval fell through the floor to the mid-20s from the mid-high 30s because of his immigration reform proposals that included amnesty. Before then, conservatives/Republicans largely stuck behind him even as he became deeply unpopular among swing voters.

[Nyvin]

I'm predicting that we'll never see Trump's approval rating go below 35% regardless of what happens....ever.

[Virginiá]

I'm predicting that we'll never see Trump's approval rating go below 35% regardless of what happens....ever.

I'm rather surprised it has stuck at 38% for this long, despite the scandals that have been blowing up. It's not like it hasn't dipped to 35% - 36% before, even if only for a couple days.

It might just be the case that only a recession or completely bungling a massive national disaster can push it lower (for a sustained period of time). Pretty sad, if true.

[Technocracy Timmy]

I'm predicting that we'll never see Trump's approval rating go below 35% regardless of what happens....ever.

I'm rather surprised it has stuck at 38% for this long, despite the scandals that have been blowing up. It's not like it hasn't dipped to 35% - 36% before, even if only for a couple days.

It might just be the case that only a recession or completely bungling a massive national disaster can push it lower (for a sustained period of time). Pretty sad, if true.

Exactly.

For all of our faults and problems, the country is in an economic recovery and there's no pressing foreign policy affair going on (North Korea flare ups is the closest). Once the economy goes into recession and/or there's a foreign policy blunder...uh oh for Trump.

[Shameless Lefty Hack]

I'm predicting that we'll never see Trump's approval rating go below 35% regardless of what happens....ever.

I'm rather surprised it has stuck at 38% for this long, despite the scandals that have been blowing up. It's not like it hasn't dipped to 35% - 36% before, even if only for a couple days.

It might just be the case that only a recession or completely bungling a massive national disaster can push it lower (for a sustained period of time). Pretty sad, if true.

This seems like pretty important context. Remember that 59% of the GOP thought Nixon shouldn't have been impeached mere days before he resigned.

[pbrower2a]

It is far easier to lose 4% of approval from 63% than from 38%. With approval at 63% there are plenty of ways for pols to lose some approval, like proposing some critical legislation that lacks appreciably more than 50% support. There really is little critical legislation that has much more than 50% support when government has been running somewhat smoothly. If there has been a recent dictatorial government or one thoroughly incompetent or corrupt, then the recent new democratic leader can deal first with undoing the harm before proceeding to issues of more controversy.

Political change is likely in a democracy when an item on the agenda has about 53% support. The Obama administration got behind same-sex marriage when polls started showing it getting just over 50% support. But even then, it was opposed by just under 50% of the public. 

When an elected official has over 60% approval in a polity with a near 50-50 split of partisanship, political reality has yet to set in. When the elected official has about 48% support in such a society, he is still doing adequately. If he chooses his battles appropriately, then he will win re-election if he so seeks. When the elected official has 38% or so support in a place of a 50-50 split in partisanship, then reality has set in and is nearly set in concrete.

Donald Trump will not need an approval rating in the 20s to be an easy target for just about any Democratic challenger in 2020. Where he is now, he would be in position to lose like Hoover in 1932 or Carter in 1980, if for very different reasons. He will still get the support of people who want economic inequality as severe as in the Jim Crow South or the latter years of Imperial Russia. He has support, and will keep it, from people who want a wall built along the Mexican border. He will maintain support from people who see Islam as a real menace to America. Some people think that America can be 'great again' so long as they are convinced that they will have the privilege of getting special privileges due to hardships imposed upon others.

       

[Person Man]

How low has a president gone and still recovered with no consequences? There was Truman, right? Even he lost Congress and only ran once.

If there becomes a time when it becomes apparent we are "electorally locked in", there will be issues.

[Mr. Morden]

How low has a president gone and still recovered with no consequences? There was Truman, right? Even he lost Congress and only ran once.

Here's the answer according to Nate Silver:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/have-trumps-problems-hit-a-breaking-point/

You must be logged in to read this quote.

[Inmate Trump]

33%???

Wow.

It's hard to imagine how a president could get reelected with that kind of rating. Was Dewey just a really terrible candidate?

[GeorgiaModerate]

33%???

Wow.

It's hard to imagine how a president could get reflected with that kind of rating. Was Dewey just a really terrible candidate?

Yes, he was.  A brief summary from http://www.nbcnews.com/id/26661213/ns/politics-decision_08/t/how-truman-defied-odds:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

That wasn't the only reason, of course.  Another possible factor is that the economy had begun to recover in 1948 from a recession in 1946-47, and the electorate may have (consciously or unconsciously) given Truman some credit for that.

[Hindsight was 2020]

33%???

Wow.

It's hard to imagine how a president could get reflected with that kind of rating. Was Dewey just a really terrible candidate?

Opposite Dewey was JFK before JFK (a charming/charismatic rock star like politican whom the pres loved) he had Warl Warren as his running mate an most were expecting a slaughter. Truman beat him pretty much by running on FDR's memory which shows you how popular FDR was an how strong the NEmew Deal coalition was

[Mr. Morden]

33%???

Wow.

It's hard to imagine how a president could get reflected with that kind of rating. Was Dewey just a really terrible candidate?

No, I think you misunderstand.  Truman's job approval by election day was bad, but not as bad as 33%.  33% is the lowest that he reached in his first term, but he reached it well before election day, and then made a comeback.  That's the lowest that anyone's ever reached before later being reelected.  E.g., I think Bill Clinton was in the high 30s for a while in 1993/1994, but then bounced back enough that by election day 1996, he was reasonably popular.

[Phony Moderate]

IIRC Gallup had Truman's approval rating at 36% in the summer of 1948 but didn't poll again until after the election. It almost certainly would have been higher than 36% in October 1948, when he was giving 'em hell across the country.

[Person Man]

And both Truman and Clinton lost Congress and they are where Trump is.

[pbrower2a]

How low has a president gone and still recovered with no consequences? There was Truman, right? Even he lost Congress and only ran once.

Here's the answer according to Nate Silver:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/have-trumps-problems-hit-a-breaking-point/

You must be logged in to read this quote.

But with Truman the 33% probably reflected events overseas, especially the results of Commie power-grabs in central and Balkan Europe and the Far East, and the hardships of the military-to-civilian transition in the postwar economy. That low point of 33% had nothing to do with personal impropriety of any kind. People may have questioned the competence and decisiveness of Truman but never his integrity. Communist coups in Hungary and Czechoslovakia were followed by the highly-successful Berlin Airlift, and the transition from a military economy to a civilian economy brought about a level of prosperity that Americans had never experienced before.

With Trump, a combination of corruption, cronyism, incompetence, extremism, and despotic tendencies overpower the faults that Truman had. I expect Republicans to do what they can while they can to establish the pure plutocracy of their dreams and try to entrench themselves by changing the election laws to their benefit.

President Trump is going to need one thing that no President has had without the condition of a war that makes any dissent suspect -- a personality cult. What may have been appropriate when the President faced the second greatest military force of the time (the Confederacy!) or two great powers  as Evil Empires at once (Nazi Germany and Thug Japan) in wars deciding whether the United States of America could survive as a democracy clearly does not apply to Donald Trump, who is about as far from being a Lincoln or an FDR as he could be. He is a sick joke to America, as bad as the construct of "One Big-A$$ Mistake, America" by the Hard Right.

"Tacky, Ruthless (or Reckless), Unethical, Malign Poltroon" seems to fit better and has no hint of profanity.

By 2020 America will have the readiness to elect someone as similar to Barack Obama in virtues and agenda as possible for President. Caution, reverence for precedent and protocol, integrity, an insistence upon clean government, and empathy for people with disadvantages looks like a viable solution for all the problems that we now have.  

[I Won - Get Over It]

Gallup

37% (-1)
56% (-/-)

[Technocracy Timmy]

If I'm reading the 538 averages correctly, Trump has been on the decline since roughly May 8.

[The_Doctor]

An irony: the low uninsurance rate and the good economy im probably keeping Trump afloat at 35-39%. If either changes I can see him going to low 30s.

[Shadows]

How low has a president gone and still recovered with no consequences? There was Truman, right? Even he lost Congress and only ran once.

Here's the answer according to Nate Silver:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/have-trumps-problems-hit-a-breaking-point/

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Wiki -

Truman's victory is considered to be one of the greatest election upsets in American history. Virtually every prediction indicated that he would be defeated by Dewey. The Democratic Party had a severe three-way ideological split, with both the far left (Henry A. Wallace of the Progressive Party) and far right of the Party (Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond) running third-party campaigns.

(Truman won 49.55% votes & 303 of the electoral college votes - A comfortable victory)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1948

https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2008/10/30/past--present-harry-trumans-1948-comeback-campaign

The greatest comeback in politics took place 60 years ago, forever set into the political imagination by its capping image: Truman triumphantly holding a copy of the Chicago Daily Tribune with its banner headline. The Democratic Party consisted of "an unhappy alliance of Southern conservatives, Western progressive, and Big City labor."

Another big liability was an abject inability to deliver a prepared address: He had poor eyesight that prompted him to lean so far over his text that his audience would see the top of his head. He easily lost his place. He nasally droned through his texts so quickly that it seemed he was concentrating so hard on getting his words out that he could spare no thought for which to emphasize.

Truman btw explicitly campaigned on Single Payer which the AMA termed as "Socialized Medicine",
 "Moscow line" & the GOP opposed. Truman castigated the AMA as "un-American" & later would say his failure to pass a Universal Public health insurance the most bitter & troubling disappointment of his presidency !

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Remember, Bernie would have carried the Johnson/Stein voters in WI, PA and MI for the margin of victory and the Clintons were ethically wrongdoers.  Since, Trump will be a 1 term president, it won't matter all that much.

[Virginiá]

Gallup (May 20th)

Approve 38% (+1)
Disapprove 56% (-/-)

-

This appears to be his longest stretch in the 30s since becoming president.

[heatcharger]

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.