Trump approval ratings thread 1.1

[Gass3268]

When do congressional Republicans begin backing away from Trump? Mid 30s approval is low but what does it need to be in order for mainstream republicans to distance themselves? I'm not referring to moderates like Ros-Lehtinen or Comstock who are already distancing themselves.

Look at the Republican approval numbers, if it gets below 75% or into the high 60's I think you'll see more jump ship.

[The_Doctor]

When do congressional Republicans begin backing away from Trump? Mid 30s approval is low but what does it need to be in order for mainstream republicans to distance themselves? I'm not referring to moderates like Ros-Lehtinen or Comstock who are already distancing themselves.

Look at the Republican approval numbers, if it gets below 75% or into the high 60's I think you'll see more jump ship.

Didn't Quiinnipiac had strongly approve down to 63% among GOP? Could be wrong.

[pbrower2a]

I don't usually make predictions of the likely direction of a poll unless it involves an event likely to change basic reality or perceptions of such. On the positive side, think of the whacking of Osama bin Laden.

If the Comey testimony does not shred any remaining opinion that Americans have of the Trump Administration, nothing can. It may be ironic that Barack Obama proved a firm enforcer of American military and diplomatic interests overseas and that Donald Trump has already proved a disaster on issues of national security. 

[Mr. Morden]

When do congressional Republicans begin backing away from Trump? Mid 30s approval is low but what does it need to be in order for mainstream republicans to distance themselves? I'm not referring to moderates like Ros-Lehtinen or Comstock who are already distancing themselves.

Look at the Republican approval numbers, if it gets below 75% or into the high 60's I think you'll see more jump ship.

Didn't Quiinnipiac had strongly approve down to 63% among GOP? Could be wrong.

They have his job approval among Republicans at 81%, of which 63% is "strongly approve".

[Middle-aged Europe]

Gallup

Approve 37% (-1)
Disapprove 58% (+1)

[Holmes]

Gallup

Approve 37% (-1)
Disapprove 58% (+1)

Democrats sweating

[Gass3268]

When does Trump hit 60% Disapproval in a Gallup poll?

[heatcharger]

Trumpcare is in the dumps as well, per Quinnipiac:

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Approve 17% (-3)
Disapprove 62% (+5)

[Virginiá]

When does Trump hit 60% Disapproval in a Gallup poll?

Probably when he gets to around 33 - 34%. To be at or above 60% disapproval on a consistent basis, I think he'd have to constantly be somewhere between 29 - 32% approval, or less.

[Person Man]

Truman and Clinton were able to get their act enough soon enough to be reelected from this state but no one held on to Congress after something like this. Unless the Democrats are spent, Trump loses at least the House.

[Hindsight was 2020]

Major difference is the economy played big roles in why they were vulnerable an then bounced back with Trump the economy isn't a factor it's been all self inflicted wounds

[Mr. Morden]

Truman and Clinton were able to get their act enough soon enough to be reelected from this state but no one held on to Congress after something like this.

True, but the GOP victory in 1994 came from a 7 percentage point House popular vote margin.  And given current geographic distribution of Democratic and Republican voters, it's not at all a given that a 7 point margin of victory in the popular vote would actually result in the Democrats winning a majority of seats in the House.  It would probably be pretty close, with a margin like that.

[Person Man]

Truman and Clinton were able to get their act enough soon enough to be reelected from this state but no one held on to Congress after something like this.

True, but the GOP victory in 1994 came from a 7 percentage point House popular vote margin.  And given current geographic distribution of Democratic and Republican voters, it's not at all a given that a 7 point margin of victory in the popular vote would actually result in the Democrats winning a majority of seats in the House.  It would probably be pretty close, with a margin like that.

I would think that it wouldn't translate directly because
1) Trump isn't running
2) As Reapportionment is aging, there might be regression back to natural composition of districts
3) Democrats will run a more targeted campaign and because they just have to go district by district, they will give up on certain issues as they need to stay competitive in that district they lost by 10 or 15 last time.

What is the biggest margin in a "rigged" midterm?  How much did a Party stay in majority despite losing?

[Mr. Morden]

Truman and Clinton were able to get their act enough soon enough to be reelected from this state but no one held on to Congress after something like this.

True, but the GOP victory in 1994 came from a 7 percentage point House popular vote margin.  And given current geographic distribution of Democratic and Republican voters, it's not at all a given that a 7 point margin of victory in the popular vote would actually result in the Democrats winning a majority of seats in the House.  It would probably be pretty close, with a margin like that.

I would think that it wouldn't translate directly because
1) Trump isn't running
2) As Reapportionment is aging, there might be regression back to natural composition of districts
3) Democrats will run a more targeted campaign and because they just have to go district by district, they will give up on certain issues as they need to stay competitive in that district they lost by 10 or 15 last time.

As I've noted before, if you actually just took the 2016 House results and assumed a uniform swing, then the Dems would need to win the popular vote by as much as ~12 points or so in order to win a House majority.  That's a markedly worse situation for them re: geographic distribution of their voters than, say, you would get from projecting 2006 off of the 2004 results.

But there won't be a uniform swing, and I would assume that voters in swing districts are swingier, and as you said, resources will be targeted to the competitive seats.  So a national victory margin of ~7 points would conceivably be enough to get them a House majority, but probably much less than that wouldn't be enough.

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I don't think there's been a recent House election in which the winner lost the popular vote by much more than about 1 percentage point.  But this is probably the all time worst period for Dems re: the geographic distribution of their voters.  It's only relatively recently (compared to the history of the country, that is) that the Dem-GOP split has become urban vs. rural much moreso than a regional divide.  So urban packing didn't used to be nearly as big of a problem.

[Inmate Trump]

Any predictions at how low Trump's approval will fall post-Comey testimony?

[Virginiá]

Any predictions at how low Trump's approval will fall post-Comey testimony?

I'm more inclined to think it will keep his approval in the upper-30s, rather than breaking new ground. His approval rating in Gallup has already hit 35% for a single day once before, so I suppose it is possible he gets close to that. He is only 2% away, after all.

What I am more curious about is whether all this constant drama is enough to set Trump's new approval baseline in the upper-30s range, as opposed to the lower 40s. The past month and a half has been brutal for him, but it's not clear any of it will truly stick once the news cycles begin to return to their pre-Comey ways. Then again, maybe this whole Russia scandal will continue to dominate until the investigation is concluded.

[pbrower2a]

Any predictions at how low Trump's approval will fall post-Comey testimony?

5% at most. His approval ratings are at the level at which he couldn't lose much support. At this point, it's a matter of reducing what little support he has. The people who love his agenda might not be concerned about obstruction of justice, possible coordination between the GOP or the Trump campaign with Russian intelligence services, or other challenges to his competence. Really it is best that approval levels do not fall to the level at which the Armed Forces intervene.

The real issue is whether the disapproval goes to the level of insisting that the President resign. We have seen no polls on resignation yet. For many conservatives the issue might not be illegality of his conduct but instead his ineffectiveness as President.

For those who are already in the "strong disapproval" category  as I have been in since he called for the Muslim ban (do not mess with freedom of religion!), how much more cause do they have to strongly disapprove of him?  In a perfect universe, the 2016  election would have  given us  a Democratic President and a majority-Democratic Senate.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Gallup

Approve 37% (+-0)
Disapprove 58% (+-0)

Nothing to see here. Too early to see any impact from Comey testimony. That's tomorrow or the day after.

[Matty]

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.

[GeorgiaModerate]

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.

This is true, and can work the other way as well.  In early 1991, after the conclusion of Desert Storm, GHW Bush's approval was close to 90%.  If anyone had suggested that he'd lose handily the following autumn, they'd have been laughed out of town.

[Virginiá]

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.

[Beet]

The difference with Trump is that he's never been popular; at least Reagan and Obama were in their first years. Besides, both of them had recessions to blame, and the economy is good, at least cyclically. Rally-around-the-flag effects are a long term poisoned chalice; in 1980, 1991 and 2003 we saw presidents benefit from them only to collapse later. Even last-minute surprises have a mixed record, the Comey letter helped Trump, but Macron leaks were a bust, and two terrorist attacks, which should have been the big Kahuna, failed to deliver a good night for May. The problem is, that Trump is just fundamentally unfit for the presidency. He lacks the temperament.

[pbrower2a]

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. 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. 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 base is not enough; McGovern and Mondale at least won their Party's bases.  They won almost nothing else.

[Gass3268]

Survey Monkey

41% Approve (-1)
57% Disapprove (+/-)

Source

[Obama-Biden Democrat]

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.

This is true, and can work the other way as well.  In early 1991, after the conclusion of Desert Storm, GHW Bush's approval was close to 90%.  If anyone had suggested that he'd lose handily the following autumn, they'd have been laughed out of town.

In late 1994 and early 1995 right after the devastating 1994 midterm election Rush Limbaugh had gleefully started his daily countdown clock to count the days until Bill Clinton would be swept out of office. Rush's shows would start with stating how many day's we're left in Bill Clinton's presidency. In 2011, Democrats could point to Clinton having a big comeback in 1995-1996, but Clinton had no recent precedent to point to.