Donald Trump: polls of approval and favorability

[pbrower2a]

Approvals for President Trump will likely rise a little in the aftermath of the bombing raid on Syria. I question whether the President has achieved any permanent solution. I'm no fan of the death penalty, but a leader who gasses helpless civilians deserves to die at the end of a rope.

[Bob Butler 54]

(04-08-2017, 07:44 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Approvals for President Trump will likely rise a little in the aftermath of the bombing raid on Syria. I question whether the President has achieved any permanent solution. I'm no fan of the death penalty, but a leader who gasses helpless civilians deserves to die at the end of a rope.

I'm waiting on the polls.  A lot of the America First crowd doesn't like use of force for moral reasons.  They haven't a love for the World's Policeman role.  Trump went against the red stereotype here.

[Eric the Green]

(04-08-2017, 08:14 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(04-08-2017, 07:44 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Approvals for President Trump will likely rise a little in the aftermath of the bombing raid on Syria. I question whether the President has achieved any permanent solution. I'm no fan of the death penalty, but a leader who gasses helpless civilians deserves to die at the end of a rope.

I'm waiting on the polls.  A lot of the America First crowd doesn't like use of force for moral reasons.  They haven't a love for the World's Policeman role.  Trump went against the red stereotype here.

That's a Republican view from the 1930s and 40s; not today. Trump's base will like his strike. Liberal peace-movement veterans are the ones who don't like use of force for moral reasons, plus a few thorough-going libertarians like Rand Paul and Ron Paul. Most of the red crowd only uses this as a slogan to justify unrestrained greed; they could really care less about the use of force otherwise. They applaud it.

[pbrower2a]

Mostly posted in Leip's Election Atlas -- by me.


So long as we believe that President Trump will be running for re-election, this study by Nate Silver will remain relevant.

I used it to predict that when Obama had approval ratings in the middle-to-high 40s early in 2016 that he would win re-election so long as one recognized

(1) that he was a competent campaigner
(2) that he had legitimate achievements in his first term
(3) that he satisfied his core support
(4) and that he would not have some disaster of foreign policy, economic meltdown, or scandal involving himself or those around him.

One cannot govern as one campaigns. There are deals to make, and one does not get everything that one likes. People who vote for a candidate in one year may find themselves disappointed with the results but find things generally tolerable.

It was obvious that President Obama would have to campaign just to save his political life, but he could do it. I'm guessing that a politician typically loses about 6% of his support as a candidate while governing or legislating (politics is a dirty business) but can get it back with adept campaigning. Against the usual challenger he would win. Mitt Romney was still an unusually-good challenger, but Obama still won.

A hint: Mitt Romney would have won by a landslide against Hillary Clinton, and nobody would be questioning whether he pulled any bait-and-switch tricks upon Americans who later feel gulled.

As the Trump administration continues, more people are going to recognize Barack Obama as an excellent model of a politician -- a cautious and likable person who runs a tight ship. That is a tough standard, but you can see how that model works. The likable and cautious leader will attract much competition just to be at his side, and he will get the best and will get good results. The not-so-likable, more reckless leader will attract opportunists who seek to impose their ideological agendas and seek power for what it can do for the satisfaction of their egos and perhaps for their individual enrichment.

The model suggests that an incumbent Governor or Senator typically gains back about 6.5% of what he loses from winning an election to governing or legislating (and having to make some unpopular decisions) to returning to campaign mode. On the average, if he showed that he could win the last time, he probably wins the next time. But they can lose. Appointed pols almost invariably lose -- because they never showed that they could win election before running as an incumbent. Yes, competence, integrity, and general shifts of support can matter too.

What does the Presidency have in common with the Senate and a State governorship aside from being elected at the state level? The latter two have rather little in common except for a demand for a modicum of competent performance, and that one gets a record of achievements.

At this point I look at the model and suggest that the usual President who got 46% of the popular vote could reasonably get 40%-or-so in approval ratings and get stuck there. Unless something wild happens between now and the winter of 2019-2020, the approval ratings for President Trump will be around 40%. He will need to be an average campaigner against an average challenger just to get back to 46% of the vote again. If his opponent is a better campaigner than average or is a better strategist, then he (or she) will win.
Posted elsewhere (Leip's Election Atlas)


Donald Trump has lost almost all chance of cutting into liberal contempt for him; he gives them nothing but a vague tolerance. His level of support is almost good enough to allow him to win the same percentage of the vote in 2020 as in 2016 in a binary election -- but in an effectively-binary election that is about what Dukakis got in 1988 and McCain got in 2008. The Democratic nominee of 2020 will be a more adept campaigner than Hillary Clinton.

Here's the really bad news for his supporters -- his level of support is stabilizing. In a way this is worse than having his support bouncing around as it did for Obama; it will be difficult for him to get the approval rate around 44% necessary for winning a majority of the vote. If you are a Republican you might now regret that Donald Trump won your Party's nomination. Were it bouncing around between 35% and 45% he would have some chance based on the news cycle of the time. He has gotten no obvious bounce from the air strike in Syria, which can be understand as both inadequate and excessive.

[pbrower2a]

From Pew Research Center:

39% Approve (-4)
54% Disapprove (-1)

Adults.

Source



Demographic crosstabs:

[Eric the Green]

My horoscope methods suggest that Hillary Clinton would have beat Mitt Romney. She had a better horoscope score than he did, as well as a favorable new moon for winning the popular vote. Trump was under-estimated as a candidate.

[David Horn]

(04-17-2017, 10:25 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: My horoscope methods suggest that Hillary Clinton would have beat Mitt Romney. She had a better horoscope score than he did, as well as a favorable new moon for winning the popular vote. Trump was under-estimated as a candidate.

Hillary was and still is very unlikable.  It's hard to win when even your supporters are less than enthusiastic.

[pbrower2a]

(04-17-2017, 10:25 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: My horoscope methods suggest that Hillary Clinton would have beat Mitt Romney. She had a better horoscope score than he did, as well as a favorable new moon for winning the popular vote. Trump was under-estimated as a candidate.

America was ready for a change, and got it. It may regret that change in 2018 and 2020.

If Trump gets his way, America will be the sort of place that people get away from if they have ability and a chance, the inverse of what America was "great" if not by current standards, then "great" by standards of the Russian Empire, southern Italy, and Mexico at the time. I can imagine medical care pricing me into another country. Or for Communist, fascist, or Ba'athist regimes at any time.

Could it be that the secret to winning is to be ruthless and dishonest, and to have connections to the most corrupt and rapacious interests in America? If so, then this country is cooked, and I am really glad that I have no children or grandchildren. If I were to go to Hell, I would certainly not want to impose its nastiness upon loved ones just to have some predictable company. See also "prison".

...I can think of a sick parody of the "Hallelujah" Chorus from Messiah, celebrating the rise and beginning of eternal rule of Greed:

For vile Greed Omnipotent reigneth!

Greed shall reign forever and ever...
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
Vicious Greed!
Cruel Greed!
Boundless Greed!

Beastly Lord! Corruption! Corruption!
Bleed all else!

Such describes the President and his most fervent supporters.

Is it any wonder that dystopian novels that most of us thought could never apply to America have gotten new life?

Evil may be incompetent at meeting human needs except at the cost of destroying the people who make the unconscionable bargains just for immediate survival, but it has shown itself remarkably competent at entrenching itself and committing all the resources of a nation that it infests to its extension and  defense. It may die, but it usually takes plenty of innocent people (including heroes) with it.

With Trump as President I can easily imagine America on the losing side of a Crisis War. I can imagine the FDR or Lincoln of the time as someone not an American. I can imagine the leadership of America in this Crisis being disgraced and severely punished for war crimes and crimes against humanity. I can imagine the victors imposing their concept of a "New Birth of freedom" -- something radically different from what Americans had recently known in politics, economics, and culture. Sure, we could have a Constitutional order -- but the Constitution in effect might be a near-translation of the post-WWII constitution of the German Federal Republic, one with far fewer seams than the one that we have, seem that right-wing interests have ripped by driving the equivalents of eighteen-wheel trucks through in recent years.

[pbrower2a]

Here's how I see the prospects for political figures:

1. GOOD BY INTENTION AND COMPETENCE AND RESULT -- makes promises that one wants, achieves them, and keeps them attractive and desirable. Congratulations on your good fortune!

That is the optimum for any voter... and a high standard to keep.

2. SUSPECT BY INTENTION, GOOD BY COMPETENCE AND RESULT -- makes promises that one may not initially like, but achieves them and convinces one after the fact.

Satisfaction, if not immediate. So the deficit spending pays for itself, or the political order cuts into government spending and deficits with no real harm. The hawkish politician may get a better foundation for peace than some overt pacifist who yields quickly to an aggressive rival in diplomacy. The politician who doesn't exude masculine aggressiveness might end up serving revenge -- cold -- because he can treat the military and the intelligence services well.

Whether a politician fits in the first or second category for a stake-holder depends upon the initial ideology of the stake-holder. Either way the results are good.

3. GOOD INTENTION, EFFECTIVE IMPLEMENTATION, SUSPECT RESULTS -- here the politician gets his way (and the individual position of the stake-holder), but results are questionable. Maybe the program was too expensive for its desired purpose. Here's where one gets serious disappointment. Maybe someone ignored the potential for bad consequences. It's back to the drawing board for the policies -- but at the next election the side with an agenda not yours will control the drawing board.

4. SUSPECT INTENTION, EFFECTIVE IMPLEMENTATION, SUSPECT RESULTS -- This is the "I told you so" position. One gets very much what one does not want, and one either gets fired up or angry. Those on the opposite side in the previous election may have gotten the third result. So the President promises a higher minimum wage and gets it -- but unemployment skyrockets. On the other side, the President might have promised pay cuts to stimulate employment, but consumer spending by people earning less craters and so does the overall economy. It's back to the drawing board after the next electoral chance, and your side gets it.

5. GOOD INTENTION, INEFFECTIVE IMPLEMENTATION -- Results do not emerge, so it is hard to judge whether the results would be desirable. Results are thus irrelevant. One has an inapt vehicle for the achievement of one's ideals.

6. SUSPECT INTENTION, INEFFECTIVE IMPLEMENTATION -- See #5. You may be relieved that the fellows you voted against didn't deliver what you disliked anyway.

7. MALIGN INTENT. It is far easier to implement evil than to implement good. Just think of this in the crudest dichotomy: it is easy to kill someone by shooting a victim in the heart and extremely difficult to save someone's life through open-heart surgery. It is easier to do an armed robbery than to establish a successful business. It is far easier to hate pariahs than to elevate pariahs. Good societies obviously insist that people make their living by non-predatory means and give people the chance, whether through laissez-faire policies or through a welfare state. Good societies put the effort into making productive people out of their youth and don't squeeze small business into bankruptcy. Malign intent usually comes with forceful means that entrench power for evil-doers. This is a nightmare, whether the efficient monstrosity of Iraq under Saddam Hussein or the ludicrous rot of the Duvalier family in Haiti. All that can redeem the situation is either utter defeat of the leadership in war or the annihilation of that elite in revolution and retribution.

Those with malign intent do everything possible to destroy their more humane antitheses. Just imagine how long Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King would have lasted in the presence of a Hitler-like or Stalin-like ruler.

[The Wonkette]

(04-17-2017, 10:25 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: My horoscope methods suggest that Hillary Clinton would have beat Mitt Romney. She had a better horoscope score than he did, as well as a favorable new moon for winning the popular vote. Trump was under-estimated as a candidate.

Got a question about candidates' horoscopes. In your methodology, do they predict popular votes or electoral college votes?

Incidently, that is my quibble with Lichtstein's 13 keys predictor. Since 2000, he's been saying that his keys predicted who would win the popular vote, but now he's being lionized because he predicted Trump's victory, even though Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes. He's trying to have it both ways -- either his model incorrectly predicted 2000 or it incorrectly predicted 2016.

[Eric the Green]

(04-18-2017, 01:35 PM)The Wonkette Wrote:

(04-17-2017, 10:25 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: My horoscope methods suggest that Hillary Clinton would have beat Mitt Romney. She had a better horoscope score than he did, as well as a favorable new moon for winning the popular vote. Trump was under-estimated as a candidate.

Got a question about candidates' horoscopes.  In your methodology, do they predict popular votes or electoral college votes?

Incidently, that is my quibble with Lichtstein's 13 keys predictor.  Since 2000, he's been saying that his keys predicted who would win the popular vote, but now he's being lionized because he predicted Trump's victory, even though Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes.  He's trying to have it both ways -- either his model incorrectly predicted 2000 or it incorrectly predicted 2016.

Yes, he said Gore would win in 2000, but it was only the popular vote. In 2016, he predicted Trump would win, but it was only the electoral vote.

In my method, as I said, I have two key indicators (plus other minor indicators). The new moon before election is usually correct, but in cases where the electoral and popular votes conflict (4 times now since 1848), it has predicted the popular vote (and thus was wrong on the outcome). 

In 2016, the new moon predicted Hillary (representing the party in power) would win the popular vote, and the horoscope scores (my other main method) favored Trump. The exact same thing happened in 2000, 1888 and 1876.

But the horoscope score method is about the actual winner. It has been correct 49 out of 58 times, and the electoral vs. popular vote had nothing to do with this. Considering the Saturn Return pattern boosts the score up to 54 out of 58. Candidates with an upcoming Saturn Return (around age 59) in the next term usually lose. In 2 of those cases where the horoscope score method was wrong, 1904 and 1960, with neither candidate having a Saturn Return coming, the new moon method was correct on the popular vote, and the popular vote elected the winner without any conflict with the electoral vote. The other 2 cases were early in history, both involving an Adams, and the popular vote/new moon method was irrelevant.

http://philosopherswheel.com/presidentialelections.html (see Who Scored What)

[David Horn]

(04-18-2017, 01:35 PM)The Wonkette Wrote:

(04-17-2017, 10:25 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: My horoscope methods suggest that Hillary Clinton would have beat Mitt Romney. She had a better horoscope score than he did, as well as a favorable new moon for winning the popular vote. Trump was under-estimated as a candidate.

Got a question about candidates' horoscopes.  In your methodology, do they predict popular votes or electoral college votes?

Incidently, that is my quibble with Lichtstein's 13 keys predictor.  Since 2000, he's been saying that his keys predicted who would win the popular vote, but now he's being lionized because he predicted Trump's victory, even though Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes.  He's trying to have it both ways -- either his model incorrectly predicted 2000 or it incorrectly predicted 2016.

I saw him interviewed today, and he hedged to the extent that marginal cases can be wrongly predicted.  At the moment, he's predicting Trump's impeachment.  Let's see how that goes.

[Eric the Green]

(04-18-2017, 03:16 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(04-18-2017, 01:35 PM)The Wonkette Wrote:

(04-17-2017, 10:25 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: My horoscope methods suggest that Hillary Clinton would have beat Mitt Romney. She had a better horoscope score than he did, as well as a favorable new moon for winning the popular vote. Trump was under-estimated as a candidate.

Got a question about candidates' horoscopes.  In your methodology, do they predict popular votes or electoral college votes?

Incidently, that is my quibble with Lichtstein's 13 keys predictor.  Since 2000, he's been saying that his keys predicted who would win the popular vote, but now he's being lionized because he predicted Trump's victory, even though Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes.  He's trying to have it both ways -- either his model incorrectly predicted 2000 or it incorrectly predicted 2016.

I saw him interviewed today, and he hedged to the extent that marginal cases can be wrongly predicted.  At the moment, he's predicting Trump's impeachment.  Let's see how that goes.

That's a bold prediction indeed. This would require a great deal of Republican support. Given who the GOP is in congress today, that's very unlikely based on what we know or suspect so far. Only if he deliberately defies a Court order, would it be possible. That's just a common sense-based prediction by me. But watch after the August 21 eclipse that darkens a path through the USA from coast to coast, and is aligned with Trump's Ascendant and Mars rising. His own famous arrogance and bluster will flare up, so we'll see what he does then that could get him in trouble!

[pbrower2a]

How President Trump fares among fans of various sports

Trump Approval:

National Adults: 37/51
Football fans: 37/53
Baseball fans: 39/51
Basketball fans: 28/62
Hockey fans: 42/50
Tennis fans: 32/61
NASCAR fans: 50/38

...I'm guessing that basketball fans skew heavily black and that tennis fans skew heavily educated. NASCAR? Heavily white and Southern.

[pbrower2a]

Until at least 2018  at the least, all that matters is the pure plutocracy under which we live and for whose rapacious, unforgiving, cruel  Master Class we must suffer with forced smiles. These people can make you hate your life. Make sure that you hate nothing else.

Lichtman's keys probably matter for 2020. I doubt that we will have a close Presidential election, and the popular vote usually coincides with the electoral vote.


1.    Party Mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections.
2.    Contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination.
3.    Incumbency: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president.
4.    Third party: There is no significant third party or independent campaign.
5.    Short-term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.
6.    Long-term economy: Real per-capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.
7.    Policy change: The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy.
8.    Social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term.
9.    Scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.
10.   Foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs.
11.   Foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs.
12.   Incumbent charisma: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.
13.   Challenger charisma: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.

1. Republicans have maxed out their hold on the House. The only way in which they can gain is if the culture changes (right-wing religious revival? Not likely with the Millennial generation, who will be the bulk of the influx of new voters) or with success in culling the vote, as in making voting difficult or impossible for poor people.  Likely a D advantage.

2. The definitive sign of a failed Presidency. When a significant faction within one's Party thinks that it can do better th an its own elected Leader, then that Leader is in deep trouble.

3. Republicans obviously win this unless someone defeats the incumbent President in the primaries, which hasn't happened since 1852.

4. Lichtman could have been more precise. If the Democrats have a significant opponent on the Left, then Republicans have an advantage. Hillary Clinton would have won had the Libertarian candidate drawn more votes from Trump. It would be more precise to say that the key is that 'the Party in question does not face a Third Party challenger drawing off a significant part of the usual votes for that Party'. There -- that's my improvement.

5. Ask again in 2020. I doubt that Trump can maintain the Obama bull market; I see him easily forcing policies that make a financial panic likely by the middle of 2020. His dream requires much pain early, and that will shape voting.

6. It will hard to improve upon the Obama record. The Trump economic package requires much widespread pain to work if ever except to reward cronies and the Master Class.

7. Even bad and unpopular policies (let us say eviscerating unions and forcing huge wage cuts, or shifting tax burdens from economic elites to the common man) qualify as a "Yes" for the Republicans. Bad consequences will appear as  negatives elsewhere, as in keys 1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 9, and 10.

8. Possible when the government seems to be in contempt of the interests of the clear majority of the People. Lichtman did not consider the Tea Party or Black Lives Matter  a high enough level of social disorder. Terrorism or riots -- that is real social unrest.

9. There's plenty of opportunity for major scandal. Conflicts of interest and the Russia connections could implode this Presidency.

10. Somehow I think that something will go very bad very fast for this President. Most of the rest of the world seems to be waiting for the departure of this President.

11. Trump is not Obama, Bill Clinton, the elder Bush, Reagan, or Nixon in ability to make a satisfying deal with another country. As a diplomat he reminds me more of Joachim von Ribbentrop than of George Shultz. 

12. Trump does not exude charisma. He won heavily upon his reputation as a shrewd businessman.

13. Wait until 2020 to make this decision.

...As I thought in November 2016, I still expect a catastrophic failure of Donald Trump as President. It's not simply that he has no precedent in the last century or so; it's that his differences from every President since at least McKinley all bode ill. He is a demagogue; he has betrayed many of his supporters. The only people who had cold feet about the relationship between him and power who have moved toward him are a tiny minority of very rich people who are better at funding campaigns than at finding political support. He is vulgar, impulsive, vengeful, and intellectually lazy. He has done nothing to cause me to believe that he will be either a  just or competent ruler.   One cannot run government as if a for-profit business (which explains the good reason to keep government as separate from economic activity as possible; if you like government and business together, then remember the poor results of the Communist model in which the government owned and operated most productive enterprise. Fascist models from Mussolini's stato corporativo to Peron's confused bosh, let alone the gangsterism of Nazism, offer little cause for hope. Government does welfare, law enforcement, defense, monetary policy, and big infrastructure better or more equitably than does private industry. (Markets have value in allocating resources and responding to consumer demand, so that's not my problem).

Most significantly, Trump is a reactionary. He has a vision of a time when WASPs utterly dominated American life as the ideal, when people worked much longer and harder for much less while the economic elites wallowed in opulent splendor. That's when there were no unions, when pollution was seen as evidence of prosperity instead of a bane, and in which people spoke of 'a solid eighth-grade education'. Much of Big Business would be delighted with a return to the 1920s, when liberalism meant that one believed in the unqualified power of Big Business and that government rightly represents property owners. Not many living people remember those who lived through the 1920s -- but I remember when many people then living did. It would seem that most people not born with silver spoons in their mouths (I knew mostly people of working-class, small-business, and blue-collar origin) preferred the latter part of the Great Depression (the late 1930s) to the allegedly-booming 1920s, the last gap of the Gilded Age.

The Gilded Age was fine for building a capitalist reality in societies still in the Agricultural Age. But we are well past that. We cannot get much happier simply by making and selling more stuff. The technological improvements that have kept inflation at bay have succeeded by allowing us to do more with much less. Just think of the difference in weight between a 25"-screen monitor CRT television (which has as little content of furniture as possible in the time) and a flat-screen TV today. Just think, at the extreme, of the tablet or cell phone that can do far more than the early mainframe computers in an object whose constraint of size is that it must be large enough to be viewed and have keys large enough for human fingers. Maybe we can't miniaturize our furniture or appliances, but we generally do better with lesser inputs of material, toil, and even energy.

Before someone tells us that Donald Trump will be as successful as Ronald Reagan -- Reagan may have talked tough, but he could deal rationally and impersonally if such was necessary, much unlike Trump. Donald Trump is competent at dealing only in the stereotyped world of business transactions. Foreign policy is not a business transaction, which explains why Ribbentrop was such a failure as an ambassador to the UK and as a foreign minister. One can get away with a lack of military experience as Commander-in-Chief if one recognizes one's limited expertise and relies upon rational thought and basic decency -- like Obama. Obama may not have seemed the sort to whack terrorists -- but he let the intelligence agencies and military do what they could do.

By 2020 many Americans will have known only one reasonably-good President except from a book or news clips -- and that will be Obama. That is eight years of twenty, and people born after 1995 will not remember Clinton any more than I remember Eisenhower (I was born in 1955) as a President when I was a near-infant. Better than Obama? If one is on the Right side of the political spectrum, then maybe the elder Bush (in which case you would have to be at least 33 by then), if not Reagan (in which case you would have to be nearly 40, at the least to remember him before he started to go senile).

Conservatives needed at the least a "new Reagan" to force a successful and permanent reorientation of American institutions and economic relationships in the latter part of the Crisis of 2020. Donald Trump is no such leader and isn't close. Democrats will need at least a 'new Obama', at least in values and overall competence, to redefine American institutions and economic relationships in the latter part of the Crisis of 2020. Skin tone, age, gender, ethnicity, region, and religion will matter not the least in such a leader.

[Eric the Green]

We'll have to see whether Trump can perform better on the 13 keys than we think he will. That's a good summary, brower. I think it will take a charismatic leader to beat Trump, since Trump has his own kind of charisma that still appeals to most of his base, and probably will continue to do so.

As of now, Terry McAuliffe has the highest score among prospective candidates, but there's little or no buzz around him yet. I think he has the right stuff, as his 11-2 or better score indicates. The Democratic candidate had better have a very good score to beat Trump's 9-4. The incumbent always has an advantage, plus the new new moon indicator is with him for the popular vote. And if the Republican wins that, he's very likely in. But, another Uranus factor and the 20-year cycle factor are in play as well, so anything could happen. 2020 will be very hard to predict.

[pbrower2a]

Texas, which has 38 electoral votes:

42% Approve
54% Disapprove

Source


(Texas Lyceum)

Note also that Ted Cruz could be having trouble with his Senate seat. There hasn't been a Democratic Senator from Texas since Lloyd Bentsen's fill-in was defeated in the next election.


Maybe Texas is approaching the national average... it's hard to tell because Texas is a tough state to poll. If President Trump is having trouble in Texas, then he is having trouble in almost all regions of America. I don't fully trust any poll of Texas because the state has too many regional divides for reliable polling, and nobody really understands the state.

If Donald Trump should lose this state in 2020, then he is losing 'bigly', as the state is the difference between about 400 and 440 electoral votes for a Democratic nominee for President.

It is a huge drop from the last poll by Texas Lyceum. parallel to what happened in Utah and Arkansas. Donald Trump will not win Texas if he has an approval rating of 42% in Texas early in 2020 just because the state is Texas.


Favorability:







*approval poll from mid-March supplanted by a poll the next week by the same pollster. Shown as a data point that I wish I had gotten at an opportune time.  


Still useful for some states.


Approval:










Even -- white



Blue, positive and 40-43%  20% saturation
............................ 44-47%  40%  
............................ 48-50%  50%
............................ 51-55%  70%
............................ 56%+     90%

Red, negative and  48-50%  20% (raw approval or favorability)
..........................  44-47%  30%
..........................  40-43%  50%
..........................  35-39%  70%
.......................under  35%  90%

White - tie.

Colors chosen for partisan affiliation.

Note the non-standard treatment of Utah. A poll of Utah released one week had Donald Trump underwater 47-50; a poll from the previous week had him up 54-41, which was still weak for a right-wing Republican in Utah.

Can you imagine Texas having the same sort of low esteem for a Republican President as Iowa, Michigan, or Wisconsin?

Biggest mistakes of American history: slavery, Jim Crow, Little Big Horn, Prohibition, closing the doors to Jewish refugees from Hitler, incarceration of the Japanese in WWII, the merger of Packard with Studebaker, Operation Iraqi Liberation, and Donald Trump.

I so dislike Donald Trump that I would undo the Declaration of Independence if I now had my choice.

[pbrower2a]

"One of these things is not like the others/all of the rest are kind of the same":



"Now it's time to play our game"

[pbrower2a]

Apples and ... apples. The only difference is time (two months), and the usual margin of error is about 4%. Same pollster.





In line with the regular Gallup polls.




Even white people as a whole barely have a positive split on Donald Trump. In view of the strong positive for Demagogue Don from white people with less than a college degree, whit people with college degrees seem to reject this President.

Democrats are more strongly anti-Trump than Republicans are pro-Trump, and Trump fares worse among those who voted against him than he fares well among those who voted for him. The President will need a miracle to salvage his credibility.

[Eric the Green]

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/first-re...ee-n750386

Democrats may be feeling vindicated by President Donald Trump's bumpy first 100 days in office, but they still have work to do if they hope to turn antipathy towards the president into a decisive rebuke of the GOP at the polls in 2018.



Other than Trump's poor approval ratings, the brightest spot for Democrats may be the continued popularity of their most recent standard-bearer. The poll finds that 52 percent of all Americans give former President Barack Obama a positive rating, while 33 percent view him negatively (+19 points).

That's compared to 39 percent who view Donald Trump favorably, while 50 percent view him negatively (-11).