Trump approval ratings thread 1.1

[Tintrlvr]

Trump choking big time in the Republican stronghold of Staten Island:

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Glad they're waking up.

That SI poll is highly dubious. It has DeBlasio doing extremely well there too, which is definitely not the case.

It's just a Staten Island subsample of a city-wide poll. I doubt the subsample is very big.

[Tintrlvr]

Gallup
Approve: 38 (nc)
Disapprove: 56 (nc)

[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.

[Tintrlvr]

But other countries have gone much longer. Australia hasn't had a recession in 25 years. I don't think a recession during Trump's term is necessarily going to happen, though the odds are decent and I agree that one would send his approvals into a tailspin.

[Tintrlvr]

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.

Yeah but Trump isn't banning all Muslims.

He obviously would if not for the constitutional issues associated with doing so. The various complications of the EOs were blatantly in order to try (unsuccessfully thus far) to avoid them being found unconstitutional and not for any other reason.

[Tintrlvr]

Michigan: Epic/MRA for Detroit Free Press.  http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2017/05/31/poll-michigans-view-trump-countrys-direction-faltering/355614001/

I don't find a link to the actual results, but the story seems to indicate the following Trump approval ratings (change since Feb):

Approve: 12% (-6) ("positive job rating")
Disapprove: 61% (+5) ("negative job rating")

Interesting that polling is showing Trump doing much worse in MI and WI than OH.

This is probably just MI polling sucking again.

[Tintrlvr]

Civitas (R) poll of North Carolina registered voters (change from mid-April):

Trump Approval:

Approve 42% (-6)
Disapprove 53% (+7)

Cooper Approval:

Approve 61% (+2)
Disapprove 24%

North Carolina is best Carolina!

Low bar given the competition.

[Tintrlvr]

He'd just veto everything out of spite for Schumer and Pelosi. Not because he actually believes in anything conservative.

There is zero chance of Congressional Democrats getting along or cooperating with Trump. This "If 2018 is a Democratic wave, 2020 will be a GOP landslide" talk needs to stop. Trump can write his concession speech if the Democrats win the House in 2018, and I'm sure even he knows it.

I don't agree with Trump becoming a Bill Clinton who can work with Congress to gain popularity at all. Those days are long gone. But I can imagine Trump running against a Democratic House in 2020 to eke out a win again (not saying it'd be likely by any means, but I can see it energizing his voter base, which is absolutely terrified of Democrats because they think they're all terrorists or something.

This is just not how it works. The public is completely clueless when it comes to who controls Congress at any given time and ascribes everything that happens in the country, good or bad, to the President and the party that controls the Presidency, irrespective of Congress.

[Tintrlvr]

He'd just veto everything out of spite for Schumer and Pelosi. Not because he actually believes in anything conservative.

There is zero chance of Congressional Democrats getting along or cooperating with Trump. This "If 2018 is a Democratic wave, 2020 will be a GOP landslide" talk needs to stop. Trump can write his concession speech if the Democrats win the House in 2018, and I'm sure even he knows it.

I don't agree with Trump becoming a Bill Clinton who can work with Congress to gain popularity at all. Those days are long gone. But I can imagine Trump running against a Democratic House in 2020 to eke out a win again (not saying it'd be likely by any means, but I can see it energizing his voter base, which is absolutely terrified of Democrats because they think they're all terrorists or something.

This is just not how it works. The public is completely clueless when it comes to who controls Congress at any given time and ascribes everything that happens in the country, good or bad, to the President and the party that controls the Presidency, irrespective of Congress.

Notice I said his voters

Who the f cares? Trump can't win in 2020 solely on the back of people who voted for him in 2016 (not to mention that a good chunk of those people are not "his voter base" and voted for him reluctantly).

[Tintrlvr]

He'd just veto everything out of spite for Schumer and Pelosi. Not because he actually believes in anything conservative.

There is zero chance of Congressional Democrats getting along or cooperating with Trump. This "If 2018 is a Democratic wave, 2020 will be a GOP landslide" talk needs to stop. Trump can write his concession speech if the Democrats win the House in 2018, and I'm sure even he knows it.

I don't agree with Trump becoming a Bill Clinton who can work with Congress to gain popularity at all. Those days are long gone. But I can imagine Trump running against a Democratic House in 2020 to eke out a win again (not saying it'd be likely by any means, but I can see it energizing his voter base, which is absolutely terrified of Democrats because they think they're all terrorists or something.

This is just not how it works. The public is completely clueless when it comes to who controls Congress at any given time and ascribes everything that happens in the country, good or bad, to the President and the party that controls the Presidency, irrespective of Congress.

Notice I said his voters

Who the f cares? Trump can't win in 2020 solely on the back of people who voted for him in 2016 (not to mention that a good chunk of those people are not "his base").

While I don't think Trump is favored to win reelection, people here are in for a rude awakening if they're assuming he's gonna lose in 2020. There is a significant amount of people that Hillary and Johnson won who Trump can get back, or if Warren or someone else very nauseating was his opponent, probably get them to vote third party again.

That wasn't my point, or even your point originally. Don't try to redirect. Your argument that Trump could plausibly blame the country's problems on a hypothetical Democratic Congress elected in 2018 is pure fantasy. That says nothing about whether Trump could win reelection.

[Tintrlvr]

He has finally reached 60% disapproval on Gallup.

Congrats, Mr. President!

Gallup (6/12/17)
Approve: 36 (nc)
Disapprove: 60 (+1)

[Tintrlvr]

Anyone remember what happened in February-April 2006 to bring W down into the 30s for approvals?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehensive_Immigration_Reform_Act_of_2006

Conservatives stopped supporting him unanimously.

[Tintrlvr]

I wonder if Gallup has made some subtle change to their methodology recently that allows them to be noisier. Ordinarily they are unusually stable compared to other pollsters.

[Tintrlvr]

If he were to have today's job approval rating on Election Day 2020, then yes, he'd presumably lose.  But I don't think the historical record shows that there's any correlation between job approval rating in a president's first year and his job approval rating three years later.

Oh, probably not. I didn't mean to imply that, although I would state that I really don't think things are going to get better for him. Trump isn't that kind of person - the kind of person to take advice and follow it to the letter, to change his behavior and make amends with people and really go out of his way to hit all the right notes.

I guess my response would be that I'm not sure how much of a president's job approval rating at the end of his first term is based on anything he has control over anyway.  He might well learn nothing, yet rebound in popularity if the economy's good.  E.g.:

2016 would sit pretty far off the trendline on the lower right of this graph, though, wouldn't it? So the point is weakened somewhat.

[Tintrlvr]

If he were to have today's job approval rating on Election Day 2020, then yes, he'd presumably lose.  But I don't think the historical record shows that there's any correlation between job approval rating in a president's first year and his job approval rating three years later.

Oh, probably not. I didn't mean to imply that, although I would state that I really don't think things are going to get better for him. Trump isn't that kind of person - the kind of person to take advice and follow it to the letter, to change his behavior and make amends with people and really go out of his way to hit all the right notes.

I guess my response would be that I'm not sure how much of a president's job approval rating at the end of his first term is based on anything he has control over anyway.  He might well learn nothing, yet rebound in popularity if the economy's good.  E.g.:

2016 would sit pretty far off the trendline on the lower right of this graph, though, wouldn't it? So the point is weakened somewhat.

I don't know.  How big was real disposable income growth in 2016?

Anyway, obviously there's some overfitting here: The 1.29 per term adjustment wasn't picked out of thin air.  It was fit to the data at hand, so that the relationship would turn out better.  I've seen other "incumbent vote share" vs. "economic indicator" plots which showed some bigger outliers.  Though, from memory, I think the outliers are more likely to happen in races in which there's no incumbent, like 2016.  In races with an incumbent running for reelection, it's a bigger deal.  (At least, that's my memory from previous plots of this nature I've seen.  In this particular plot, I think it's actually the reverse.)

Also, to pre-empt another possible objection, I'm not sure "The economy's good right now, and Trump is still struggling" works as a counterargument either.  Sure, Trump gets good marks on the economy now, despite having poor job approval #s overall.  But it's so early in his term, I imagine that even fairly low info voters understand that he hasn't been in office long enough to be able to take that much credit or blame for it yet.  Three years from now, the state of the economy will be all on Trump (in voters' minds, if not in reality).  So it'll probably loom larger in voters' assessment of his performance in office.

Real disposable income per capita growth was 2.03% annually in Q3 2016.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A229RX0Q048SBEA

Edit: Although I realize now that the graph is popular vote margin so would place 2016 very close to 2012 (just slightly down and to the right).

[Tintrlvr]

If Sanders or a Sanders-esque candidate once again loses to an “establishment” candidate in the 2020 primaries, then I could easily see a repeat of this sort of thing.

I guess the question becomes who is the establishment "Third Way" so to speak neoliberal candidate in 2020? Even a moderate like Cuomo has a pretty progressive track record. Kamala Harris and Warren don't really fit this mold listening to their speeches. Joe Biden in his recent Harvard commencement speech almost sounded Sanders-esque at critical times during his speech. Klobuchar jut doesn't have the charisma to pose a serious challenge IMO.

The only sort of moderate guy/gal who talks about working with Republicans and finding common ground with the other side is Cory Booker. And that guy has a serious problem of sounding like he's "Telling a bed time story to a 5 year old" every time he's talking so I have serious doubts he'll win the nomination.

Most of the 2020ers are trying to hug the Sanders wing of the party on policy (though some more than others).  But if the candidates mostly end up agreeing on policy, that's all the more reason to think that those who have more of a history of being "establishment" are going to get attacked on those grounds, rather than on issue positions.  Yes, if, say, Kamala Harris wins the nomination and her main rival is someone seen as being closer to the Sanders mold, then it's absolutely possible that she'll get attacked by the Sanders '16 supporters for being "a corrupt part of the establishment", or however jfern would put it.

I think this is a hard attack to make with a straight face against Harris in particular, who hasn't been around in Washington long enough to be part of "the establishment" in the minds of voters. Booker and Gillibrand may be easier to tarnish this way, although neither has been around all that long, either. And Cuomo of course hasn't been in Washington at all, though he is probably the most objectionable to the Sanders wing for ideological reasons. Ultimately, the attacks would have to be based on support for centrist policies rather than nebulous anti-establishment feelings, which is a much less successful way to harm a politician with general election (or even primary election) voters.

[Tintrlvr]

If Sanders or a Sanders-esque candidate once again loses to an “establishment” candidate in the 2020 primaries, then I could easily see a repeat of this sort of thing.

I guess the question becomes who is the establishment "Third Way" so to speak neoliberal candidate in 2020? Even a moderate like Cuomo has a pretty progressive track record. Kamala Harris and Warren don't really fit this mold listening to their speeches. Joe Biden in his recent Harvard commencement speech almost sounded Sanders-esque at critical times during his speech. Klobuchar jut doesn't have the charisma to pose a serious challenge IMO.

The only sort of moderate guy/gal who talks about working with Republicans and finding common ground with the other side is Cory Booker. And that guy has a serious problem of sounding like he's "Telling a bed time story to a 5 year old" every time he's talking so I have serious doubts he'll win the nomination.

Most of the 2020ers are trying to hug the Sanders wing of the party on policy (though some more than others).  But if the candidates mostly end up agreeing on policy, that's all the more reason to think that those who have more of a history of being "establishment" are going to get attacked on those grounds, rather than on issue positions.  Yes, if, say, Kamala Harris wins the nomination and her main rival is someone seen as being closer to the Sanders mold, then it's absolutely possible that she'll get attacked by the Sanders '16 supporters for being "a corrupt part of the establishment", or however jfern would put it.

I think this is a hard attack to make with a straight face against Harris in particular, who hasn't been around in Washington long enough to be part of "the establishment" in the minds of voters. Booker and Gillibrand may be easier to tarnish this way, although neither has been around all that long, either. And Cuomo of course hasn't been in Washington at all, though he is probably the most objectionable to the Sanders wing for ideological reasons. Ultimately, the attacks would have to be based on support for centrist policies rather than nebulous anti-establishment feelings, which is a much less successful way to harm a politician with general election (or even primary election) voters.

There are always votes that you can attach to this critique.  E.g., Booker got crucified by a certain segment of Dem. activists over his vote on drug imports.  You don't have to be a Senator for very long to accumulate some votes that will be viewed as being too corporate-friendly.  And heck, it's not just about votes.  Harris has taken flack from some on this forum just for meeting with big money donors.

Like I said, in terms of real, substantive policy disagreements on big issues, I'm not sure there will be that many among the major 2020 Dem. candidates.  And that's what makes it all the more likely that the battle lines will be drawn more along the "establishment" vs. "insurgent" axis, which is only marginally connected to issue positions as such.  E.g., Bernie Sanders says that the "Democratic Party's model is 'failing'":

http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/330123-sanders-democratic-party-model-is-failing

Senator X, do you agree with that?  If not, then you're a corporate shill, who is hopelessly compromised by big money donations.  

Those are ideological attacks, not attacks for being "too establishment". Sanders, and, maybe more importantly, his supporters, never really brought up Clinton's votes while she was in the Senate and generally did not spend much time attacking her on ideological grounds. They talked about who she was friends with, her paid speeches, vague whiffs of scandal, etc. That is much harder to do successfully and convincingly (to people who are not already in the tank, and only about maybe 15-20% of primary voters are in the tank) against someone who has only been in Washington a short time. Unless the Sanders-wing candidate is Sanders himself (who has a big personal vote now, of course), they'll struggle to make any arguments that stick in the primary against candidates who are not Hillary Clinton (or, say, Chuck Schumer or similar types of clearly establishment figures who are obviously not going to run anyway).

It's also not clear to me who the Sanders wing is supposed to be running if it isn't Sanders. They're more tepid these days on Warren (and she's very hawkish, which will turn off a lot of the Sanders wing once she actually has to talk about foreign policy), Sherrod Brown is friendly with the other candidates they like to attack as too establishment and would not play into the insidious whispers strategy, and the other possible candidates as far as I can tell are all jokes who would never go anywhere (Tulsi Gabbard??).

[Tintrlvr]

Arkansas - Talk Business & Politics-Hendrix College poll of Trump approval:

Approve - 50%
Disapprove - 47%

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http://katv.com/news/local/president-trumps-job-approval-in-arkansas-50-47

Ouch!

I imagine that the upland south is less stable for trump than some might think. Really, Idaho and Wyoming are the only states that I could firmly say will never leave the Trump column.

In approval, sure, although Arkansas is exactly the kind of state that would have a negative approval rating for Trump in 2020 but still vote 60% for him because of muh blacks and gays and gungrabbers.

[Tintrlvr]

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That's pretty bad. Staten Island is like middle America in a nutshell

Nah, Staten Island is super unrepresentative of anything except some other parts of the New York suburbs on Long Island and in New Jersey, and maybe parts of the Philly, Boston and Baltimore areas at a stretch.

[Tintrlvr]

https://twitter.com/gelliottmorris/status/892424547181395968

This is a relevant thread, where a guy talks about his model to convert generic ballot numbers to House seat changes. He claims that given incumbency/tenure/etc, Democrats will need 58% of the two-party vote to flip the House.

Not making the models here, just reporting them.

The problem with his model is he is just doing generic vs generic he doesn't factor in the fact that seats he has the R's holding the dems have already landed the A-star recruits in those districts or the fact Texas is going to get redrawn

Yeah. I really doubt the Rs will be able to keep the House with a 6 or 7 point loss. Has that ever happened? 

No, it has not. The GOP gerrymanders are strong, but nowhere near that strong. Democrats are already maxed out (or close to it) in most of their urban districts. Such a wild swing like that is going to come primarily from swing districts and light red seats, not safe blue or safe red seats where the challengers are jokes. Nate Silver and Dave Wasserman think that anything D+7 or so is sufficient to gain the House. If they're at 58%, then there's a zero percent chance that Republicans keep the House.

Yeah, he says his model was off by an average of 7 seats in 2014 and 2016 and holds that up as a sign of a high degree of accuracy... It's not, though. No more than maybe 30 seats were even contested seriously those years, so being off by 7 seats is not at all impressive and certainly not a "98% accuracy rate." Moreover, wave and non-wave elections behave quite differently as the number of serious and competitive candidates goes up dramatically on one side in a wave. I suspect his model would do quite badly if applied to 2006 or 2010.

[Tintrlvr]

For the first time, Trump conclusively failed to deliver on a promise that was important to a large chunk of his base. Trump can lie all he wants about economic growth, other countries fearing the U.S., etc. but there's no sugar-coating this one.

Unless Trump delivers on some other major Republican priority, he's going to permanently disappoint a part of his base that has backed him up until now.

The interesting question is which part of his base has he particularly upset by failing to repeal the Affordable Care Act? Arguably, it's the more fiscally conservative wing of the party, with which he likely had the shakiest support in the first place. If he falters on tax reform as well, while succeeding, even if symbolically, with immigration restrictions, abolishing affirmative action, and so on, then his more socially conservative base will likely hold steady while his support among fiscal conservatives further collapses.

I am not so certain that the opponents of the ACA are mostly "fiscal conservatives". There are certainly some who oppose it from a fiscal conservative perspective, but my impression is that the negative views of the ACA are more emotional, about resistance to government control (especially the individual mandate), giveaways to "those people" (whoever they are, but important that they are perceived as undeserving and that giveaways to those who are deserving would be okay), etc. I think that group dovetails also with a lot of what you are calling social conservatives (though these people don't necessarily have traditionally socially conservative views - they may not care about abortion or drugs or religion much) for whom Obama was culturally anathema and who are deeply distrustful of government generally, not from a spending perspective, but because they think government (or at least government by Democrats) is trying to socially engineer them and society more broadly.

Tax reform is a different animal. On that, I agree, the fiscal conservative and business wing is all about tax cuts (and really only cares about tax cuts), and, if tax cuts fail, they will be furious with Trump.

[Tintrlvr]

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Millennials FTW

But people keep saying that young millennials are right-wing!

[Tintrlvr]

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Millennials FTW

But people keep saying that young millennials are right-wing!

Are there any old millenials?

There's often a distinction drawn between "old millennials" (27 to 37) and "young millennials" (18 (or really 17) to 27), with the argument that old millennials, who came of age during the Bush presidency, are extremely Democratic/liberal but young millennials, who came of age during the Obama presidency, are much less so. There's never been much/any real evidence for this other than some dubious polls, but it's not an uncommon view.

Worth pointing out also that the youngest voters in 2020 will be non-millennials born after 2000.

[Tintrlvr]

Rasmussen, Aug 16:

Approve 40 (25 strongly)
Disapprove 58 (48 strongly)

On Friday he was at 45/53, so that's a net change of -10.

Rasmussen, August 17, 2017

Approve 40% (24% strongly)
Disapprove 59% (49% strongly)

Also...

Wow. All the congressional leaders have even worse approval ratings than Trump. Crazy.

I can sort of understand the low approval for Pelosi and McConnell given that they have been objects of hate for the opposing party for years and years (and McConnell is evil incarnated, of course). But what the hell have Paul Ryan and Chuck Schumer done to deserve this?

Personally, I do hate McConnell passionately, but I don't have strong feelings towards Paul Ryan either way. And I like Pelosi and Schumer quite a lot.

Not quite. Pelosi is on the same level as Trump (lower approval but also lower disapproval - just lower name recognition, actually net one point better than Trump (-18 vs. -19 for Trump)), and Schumer is doing much better than Trump on net. Ryan and McConnell doing worse than Trump isn't that big of a surprise, given that it's hard to see many/any Democrats opposing Trump but supporting them, yet there are a lot of archconservatives who think Ryan and McConnell aren't doing enough to implement Trump's agenda.

[Tintrlvr]

I think the answer is that it's just noise, and that Gallup has moved all around over the course of a few days when nothing in particular was happening so no surprise that that has continued to be the case even when there is a big news story. If Trump touches 40% again, I might feel otherwise, but for now it's still just noise.