Donald Trump: polls of approval and favorability

[pbrower2a]

(08-07-2017, 03:52 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: This son of a bitch is now at a point where he can no longer use the excuse of "fake news" / "the lib media is out to get me" etc.

I can't think of a single President during the cognizant part of my lifetime (essentially from about '68 onward) who's been such a whiner and cry baby about the big bad media / the big bad (fill in opposition faction).

Enough already!

It's not simply the liberal media -- it's the lying, loser liberal media! (snark intended)

I have heard politicians bait the news media, and almost every one of those pols was deep in a scandal of some kind that eventually brought down the pol.

[pbrower2a]

A very early poll -- for the New Hampshire Presidential primary of 2020. Republican only. Nobody has any clear idea of who will be the Democratic nominee yet.

Poll by ARG in New Hampshire, but only of people who say that they intend to vote in the Republican Primary of 2020.

Quote:2020 New Hampshire Republican Presidential Primary Ballots

Interview dates: August 4-6, 2017

Sample size: 600 likely Republican presidential primary voters (257 interviews completed among landline households and 343 completed among cell phones)

Margin of error: ± 4 percentage points, 95% of the time

Survey Sponsor: The American Research Group, Inc. for the New Hampshire Poll

The New Hampshire Poll has been conducting surveys of voters in New Hampshire since 1976.

Question wording and responses:

If the New Hampshire Republican presidential primary election were being held today between John Kasich and Donald Trump, for whom would you vote - Kasich or Trump? (names rotated)

Kasich 52 - Trump 40

Republicans 51-42
Undeclared 54-37

If the New Hampshire Republican presidential primary election were being held today between John Kasich and Mike Pence, for whom would you vote - Kasich or Pence? (names rotated)

Kasich 41 - Pence 27

Republicans 37-30
Undeclared 48-21

http://americanresearchgroup.com/nhpoll/pres20/

New Hampshire is no longer a microcosm of America, but even this electorally-small state in a corner of the US powerfully suggests that Republicans are beginning to recognize that Donald Trump is a huge mistake. The New Hampshire primary does little to select the Republican nominee; it usually is enough to knock out some under-funded and less-than-serious campaigns.

Republicans are beginning to recognize that Donald Trump is a huge mistake as President. Democrats stood firmly behind President Obama for all the consequences to their Party... but at least they had good reasons for doing so. Not that it is yet ripe time to predict such, and that there is no precedent -- but Donald Trump could lose the nomination of the Republican party in 2020 should he seek it.

I can easily explain why Donald Trump is having a hard time. But Pence? Is it because he is already considered extreme or because people think him unduly tied to President Trump and his personal scandals or erratic behavior? Donald Trump and Mike Pence are very different people.

[Eric the Green]

(08-04-2017, 01:43 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: For comparison again:

Interesting list. Notice that the further back in time a president is, the higher he tends to be on the list. We live in a time of presidents who are quickly seen to be disappointing, either because of how bad the presidents have become, or because of the public attitudes toward presidents and the political polarizations that have developed in the course of this saeculum; or both.

[pbrower2a]

New Hampshire, North Carolina, Virginia. Three alleged swing states (but I suspect that Virginia is now one of the solidest Democratic states).

UNH Poll: New Hampshire

Trump approval: 34-55 (-21)

https://cola.unh.edu/sites/cola.unh.edu/...080917.pdf

Polls swing wildly in New Hampshire, but even if this negates a hard-to-believe poll of New Hampshire it does not change the a apperance of the state as big trouble for the President in 2020.

....................

North Carolina, PPP. Not commissioned by any outside group.

Approval/disapproval, President Trump: 44-50
"Do you think that Donald Trump is really making America great again?" Yes -- 37% No -- 52%
Prefer Obama over Trump -- Obama 49, Trump 45

Approval, Gov. Roy Cooper (D) 48-33
Senator Richard Burr ® 34-43 (re-elected 2016, up for re-election in 2022)
Senator Thom Tillis ® 28-45 (up for re-election in 2020)

Generic ballot for US Congress... Democrat 46%, Republican 40%

Prefer the current ACA or something Trump wants? ACA 46%, GOP plan 33%, not sure 21%

Excited about voting in the 2018 election?

Very excited 51%
Somewhat 23%
Not at all 23%

The sample admits to voting 46-44, Trump over Clinton. North Carolina was close -- but not that close. Could it be that people who voted for President Trump often want to forget that they did so? I saw a similar phenomenon with Dubya after 2006 as his approval ratings went into the septic tank.

(amazing since there will be no Presidential, gubernatorial, or Senate election in 2018 in North Carolina).

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2..._80917.pdf


North Carolina looks about R+6, so draw your own conclusions. I think that Republicans will have a hard time holding onto the House.

.........................

Virginia: Quinnipiac, Aug 3-8, 1082 RV

Approve 36
Disapprove 61

They also have Northam over Gillespie 44/38 for Governor, with 4% for the Libertarian candidate.

Senator approvals:

Kaine 54/38
Warner 59/30

Is Virginia swinging D? Or is it simply one of the states least amenable to populist appeals? Probably the only state that voted against Bill Clinton twice but went for Hillary Clinton in 2016.








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)
.......................... 44-47% 30%
.......................... 40-43% 50%
.......................... 35-39% 70%
.......................under 35% 90%

White - tie.


Now for the theme of disapproval as shown in the Gallup data and subsequent polls:




navy under 40
blue 40-43
light blue 44-47
white 48 or 49
pink 50-54
red 55-59
maroon 60-69
reddish-black 70+

[pbrower2a]

I'd guess that disapproval of President Trump is over 80% in the District of Columbia. Assuming that the Congressional districts of Maine and Nebraska go as their states go at-large, I can count electoral votes by disapproval rating based either upon the Gallup composite or a poll from May or later...

Listing the electoral votes available at levels of disapproval for the President from the lowest levels to the highest

EVB DSR CHG EVA states

000 36 11 011 ND WV WY
006 39 16 027 AL OK
022 41 03 030 MT
030 42 21 051 ID KS TN
051 43 23 075 KY LA NE SD
075 44 09 084 SC
084 46 16 100 MO MS
100 47 06 106 AR
106 48 32 138 AK IN OH
138 50 37 175 GA NC UT
175 51 77 252 FL TX WI
252 52 17 269 AZ IA
269 53 06 275 NV
275 55 08 287 ME NH RI
287 56 15 302 DE NM OR
302 57 31 316 CO MN
316 58 34 350 IL NJ
350 59 24 374 CT HI WA
374 61 16 407 MI VA
407 62 49 456 NY PA
456 64 10 466 MD
466 66 11 477 MA
477 71 58 535 CA VT
535 80 03 538 DC

EVB -- electoral votes BEFORE winning the state(s)
DIS -- disapproval rating
CHG -- change in the number of electoral votes
EVA -- electoral votes AFTER winning states in this category
'80' is my guess for the District of Columbia.

This is how the states 'fall' if I use disapproval ratings for the President to predict which states switch from an unnamed opponent to Donald Trump. He must win states in which his disapproval rating is 43% just to avoid a loss like those of Hoover in 1932 or Carter in 1980. For him to lose that badly he would have to lose even more credibility.

[pbrower2a]

Gallup 8/14

61% Disapprove
34% Approve


Getting uglier, isn't it?

[pbrower2a]

Poll: 40 Percent Now Support Trump Impeachment

by Carrie Dann


Four in ten Americans now support the impeachment of President Donald Trump — a ten point jump in the last six months — according to a new poll from the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI).
The survey found that 40 percent of Americans — including nearly three-quarters of Democrats but just seven percent of Republicans — back impeaching the president and removing him from office. That’s compared to 30 percent who said the same in February.

Trump’s overall favorability rating in the poll stands at 38 percent favorable, 56 percent unfavorable.


The PRRI survey was conducted August 2-8, before last weekend’s white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va. Trump’s statement that “both sides” deserve blame for the resulting violence has prompted criticism from Republicans and Democrats alike.

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/first-re...nt-n793251




The survey also found that about half of Americans — 48 percent — say there is clear evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 election in order to help Donald Trump, while 43 percent disagree.

The poll of 2,024 Americans was conducted August 2-8, 2017 with a margin of error of +/- 2.7 percentage points.

[pbrower2a]

Mostly posted elsewhere (Leip's Election Atlas) but modified to fit the generational theory.

The three states that were the closest wins for Donald Trump have turned against him. Because Trump is doing badly in all states that he lost, he must win one of these three states to get re-elected. He won't be getting them back in 2020 except in a rigged election. Of course, this is a Crisis Era, so we can rule out far fewer things (including a military coup) than we can in less ominous times.

Marist, approval, registered voters (which will skew old because many voters of 2020 will be voting for the first time, and that will be largely younger voters). But even without an infusion of younger, liberal votes President Trump looks to be the political equivalent of a helpless lobster in a cooking pot full of boiling water -- at least in these three states.

Michigan: 36 approve, 55 disapprove.

Trump does above 50% with Republicans, White Evangelicals, "Trump supporters", "Tea Party supporters", and people describing themselves as  'conservative' or 'very conservative' but otherwise does badly among just about every identifiable group. Among men it is 43%, and from there it gets even worse across ever sector of ethnicity, educational level, income, and even region within Michigan, including southwestern Michigan which is usually about as solidly Republican as Alabama.

The Governor is term-limited, so he won't be running for re-election.  That will save him some embarrassment, as he was down 37-47 in favorability.

http://maristpoll.marist.edu/wp-content/...pdf#page=3  

Pennsylvania: 35 approve 54 disapprove

Much the same as in Michigan -- Trump fails among every group except those directly connected to his ideology. He does have a 44-42 edge among white people without college degrees, which is far from enough for a win here .

Governor Tom Wolf (D) 47-37 in favorability... good shape.

http://maristpoll.marist.edu/wp-content/...pdf#page=3

Wisconsin: 34 approve 56 disapprove

Much as in Michigan and Pennsylvania. Even "conservative/very conservative" support is rather weak for usual expectations at 63-26.  

Favorability/unfavorability of Governor Scott Walker : 40-53 among registered voters. He's going down unless he can rig the 2018 Wisconsin election, and he won't be able to help the President in a re-election bid unless he can turn his poor rating of favorability up significantly.  (An incumbent needs to have at least a 43% approval rating before the campaign season begins if running for re-election to have a 50% chance of getting re-elected. I'm thinking that the Governor is beginning to be hurt by being a right-wing Republican while Trump is President).

http://maristpoll.marist.edu/wp-content/...pdf#page=3

Don't try running against Obama if you are a Republican in these three states: in Wisconsin, 60% of registered voters have a favorable opinion of President Obama. In Pennsylvania it is 62%, and in Michigan it is 63%.

I'd love to see some polls of Georgia and Ohio (nothing yet except for Gallup's composite data) and Iowa (about due) about now.









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)
..........................  44-47%  30%
..........................  40-43%  50%
..........................  35-39%  70%
.......................under  35%  90%

White - tie.


Now for the theme of disapproval as shown in the Gallup data and subsequent polls:




navy under 40
blue 40-43
light blue 44-47
white 48 or 49
pink 50-54
red 55-59
maroon 60-69
reddish-black 70+

[pbrower2a]

Mostly posted elsewhere (see the report on Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.


Kentucky, PPP: 60-36

http://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/...18-percent

But approval of Senator McConnell is at 18%. Disapproval at 74%. Senator Rand Paul: 37-47.

 http://ourlivesontheline.org/wp-content/...esults.pdf

The disparity in approval ratings between the President and the two Senators  is without obvious explanation.  The Senators take the hit for the Trump proposal to return to profiteer-first medicine in one of the poorest states, but the President is somehow exempt from political blow-back? Most of the other questions are related to medical coverage, and they generally go against the GOP agenda.

President Trump must have a full Teflon coverage in Kentucky. McConnell could lose a Senate seat in Kentucky in 2020 while President Trump wins this state decisively. Or so it looks now, If I were a Kentucky Republican, I would prefer the inverse

Arizona (the Arizona Republic, one of the most conservative newspapers in America):


About the Survey

 

The poll surveyed 400 likely Arizona 2018 general election voters who have a history of electoral participation and was balanced to model the likely turnout of voters across party, age, region, and gender.  The live interview survey of voters was conducted by HighGround Public Affairs to both landline and cell phone users.  Anticipated turnout for the Arizona 2018 General Election has a partisan gap of Republican +12%.

 

Next, please tell me if you approve or disapprove of the job the following persons or groups are doing:

 

Q.        President Donald Trump

 

27.5%  Strongly Approve

14.3%  Somewhat Approve

6.5%    Somewhat Disapprove

48.3%  Strongly Disapprove

3.5%    Don’t Know, Refused

(Decimals: that's 42-54  for me as I fill to the next number for Trump and clip for Democrats)


 

Q.        As you may be aware, former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio was found guilty of criminal contempt of court for defying a Judge’s order to halt detention based solely on suspicion of a person’s immigration status.  There has been speculation that President Trump will pardon the former Sheriff.  Knowing what you know right now, would you support or oppose a Presidential pardon of former Sheriff Joe Arpaio?

28.3%  Strongly Support

8.8%    Somewhat Support

6.5%    Somewhat Oppose

50.3%  Strongly Oppose

6.3%    Don’t Know, Refused

Decimals, sure -- but I clip those.

We may be seeing a cultural change in Arizona. First, I'm guessing that lots of Californians escaping high rents and taxes are finding heir way to Arizona, and they are taking their political attitudes and expectations with them (OK, maybe many of those recent Californians are Hispanic, so that implies some overlap). The Hispanic segment of the electorate has been growing . It is more liberal than Anglo whites, and it is well organized politically. Assimilating? Sure. It is assimilating white Anglo people.

Arizona was closer in 2016 than usual, and it could be another Virginia  in its political trend (although either Colorado or New Mexico is a closer analogue in demographics).


http://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/o...588039001/   

The survey was conducted on August 18-19th and the margin of error of the survey is ±4.88% with 95% confidence.  The HighGround team has built a reputation of reliable and accurate polling over the past ten years – our research has been featured on Nate Silver’s 538, Real Clear Politics, Huffington Post, and many other publications. Last year, HighGround “nailed” the Prop 123 election results within 0.2% of the outcome prior to the May 2016 Special election. Clients and surveys conducted by HighGround include League of Arizona Cities and Towns, Professional Fire Fighters of Arizona, Restoring Arizona, Arizona Hospital and Health Care Association, Education Health and Safety Coalition, local school districts, and various candidate campaigns.  Visit our website to learn more about HighGround’s polling experience.







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)
..........................  44-47%  30%
..........................  40-43%  50%
..........................  35-39%  70%
.......................under  35%  90%

White - tie.


Now for the theme of disapproval as shown in the Gallup data and subsequent polls:




navy under 40
blue 40-43
light blue 44-47
white 48 or 49
pink 50-54
red 55-59
maroon 60-69
reddish-black 70+

This Arizona poll has Arizona in the same league as Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Who would have ever expected Arizona to become about as Democratic as Michigan or Pennsylvania? But that is what the poll shows. Earlier polls are in line.

I can almost predict an anti-Trump slogan perfectly fitting Michigan, Minnesota and New Hampshire (which were close to being Trump wins), Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin (probably Iowa and Ohio, maybe Indiana as well): "Promises Made, Promises Broken. That's Trump".

With Arizona, the fast-growing Hispanic (largely Mexican-American) population and Californians leaving the high taxes and rents of Californians (which surely has a large Hispanic component that should be looked at as an overlap) has been pushing the state toward the Democratic Party. The growth of the Hispanic electorate pushed California from R to D in the 1990s; Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico in the Double-Zero decade, and now Arizona. Maybe Texas around 2020? Maybe Kansas and Nebraska in the 2020s?

[pbrower2a]

PPP - National:

40% Approve
53% Disapprove

Source


For comparison, in July PPP had 41/55.  Some other tidbits from the new poll:

Generic Congressional ballot is 49 D, 35 R.  Congress approval is 9/73, McConnell is 9/61, Ryan is 16/62.

48/41 in favor of impeachment.  46/37 think the Russia story is not "fake news".  Also:

If evidence comes out that proves conclusively that members of Donald Trump’s campaign
team worked in association with Russia to help Trump win the election for President, do you
think Trump should continue to serve as President, or do you think he should resign?

Continue: 34
Resign: 54

[pbrower2a]

Democrats Hold Edge on Health Care, Climate Change; Slight Republican Advantage on Jobs and Economic Issues; GOP Leads on Defense, Trade
 
Majority Think Trump Campaign Staff Acted Improperly with Russia
 
WASHINGTON (Aug. 24, 2017)—There is widespread national concern about President Donald Trump’s public discourse and behavior, according to the latest George Washington University Battleground Poll. The survey, taken August 13-17, found a large majority of voters — 71 percent — agreed his “behavior is not what I expect from a president” (27 percent disagreed), and 68 percent agreed his “words and actions could get us accidentally involved in an international conflict” (29 percent disagreed).
 
Almost two-thirds (63 percent) of the registered voters polled said the country is on the wrong track, and a majority (56 percent) had an unfavorable view of President Trump (41 percent favorable). A similar number disapproved of the job he’s doing as president (55 percent), while 42 percent approved, and 56 percent also said he has not been effective as the president, while 39 percent said he has been effective. 
 
“The Battleground Poll data show that more Americans object to President Trump’s character than his agenda,” said GW Associate Professor of Political Management Michael Cornfield. “If there is anything approaching a consensus in today’s sharply divided America, it’s that Trump speaks and behaves inappropriately given the office he holds.”
 
When asked about his actions on current affairs, there was a small bright spot for President Trump. Half (50 percent) approve of his handling of the economy (46 disapprove). Foreign affairs were not as positive: 53 percent of voters surveyed disapproved of the president’s approach to relations with North Korea (43 percent approved). Half (52 percent) of voters agreed President Trump has been keeping his campaign promises (44 disagreed).

When asked about his actions on current affairs, there was a small bright spot for President Trump. Half (50 percent) approve of his handling of the economy (46 disapprove). Foreign affairs were not as positive: 53 percent of voters surveyed disapproved of the president’s approach to relations with North Korea (43 percent approved). Half (52 percent) of voters agreed President Trump has been keeping his campaign promises (44 disagreed).

...................................

Further material in this statement discusses Congress, which is outside the scope of this thread. I show Congressional and gubernatorial polls for states when I show approval polls for the President and think the Gubernatorial or Senatorial polls have some relationship or relevance. Trump has been tough in his expression of foreign policy, but he now looks incompetent. Contrast the norm with Obama, who modulated his rhetoric to fit the situation but generally got desirable results.  I'll take the latter any day. Whether the next President reverts to Obama or to Bush I will matter little, because both Bush I and Obama foreign policy are much the same. The fault with either could be relevance, as we will need to live in the same diplomatic universe for Bush I/Obama foreign policy to remain relevant. (To put that in the crudest terms, God forbid that large cities of South Korea and Japan be transformed into smouldering ruins infamous as sites of mass death).

This poll addresses Presidential behavior. This is not Monica Lewinsky stuff irrelevant to most of our lives, no matter how offensive and objectionable. The bad behavior of the current President is dangerous to America, let alone America's allies.

The "right track/wrong track" shift is sudden and severe. President Trump obviously bungled his response to the violence in Charlottesville, and this poll shows that. Even if this is likely to fade, the mass assessment that the President is a liar, fool, or madman won't. Under Barack Obama almost all of the ugly 'racial' incidents involved police brutality, and those steadily lost their pressing concern except among persons and communities involved.  Obama was likely to offer such suggestions as 'improve the quality of police work so that other such incidents do not happen'. Donald Trump is infamous for advocating that police departments crack down even on dissent from the communities that those police departments serve, and he never backs down from pronouncements that alleged perpetrators of highly-infamous crimes be punished severely even after they are acquitted or exonerated. Let us hope that chiefs of police be more cautious. They have far more responsibility to the elected officials above them than Donald Trump, seemingly responsible to nobody and nothing -- neither God, tradition, nor principle, all three of which are hallmarks of conservative thought.

It is still the Obama economy and the Obama bull market. President Trump will be unable to fault President Obama for any downturn.

I am tempted to believe that President Trump can go much lower in disapproval ratings. Other pollsters have shown lower approval numbers for him based upon their methodology, which includes the manner of asking questions. I am satisfied that about 30% of Americans support this President no matter what, This poll has some room to go down in rating the president; I have seen other pollsters get lower results.

[Eric the Green]

The only thing that matters is not his behavior, but his agenda, and that of the GOP. This poll is discouraging and indicates the trickle-down theory (with all its ingredients including racism, self-reliance memes, distrust of social programs, etc.) is still accepted. It is that which needs to be discarded before we can make any progress.

[pbrower2a]

538: 7 Rules For Reading Trump’s Approval Rating


Remarkable. Because we can't see the future (although I could easily predict that President Trump would be a major disappointment due to his behavior including his campaign promises and his rhetoric) we cannot see the Big Picture which which includes the next four or eight years. How short-sighted can we be? Think of how Americans saw the world in November 1941 in contrast to how it would be in November 1945. That's how a Crisis Era can go. The gangster regimes of Germany and Japan were doing very well at the time and the USA was the equivalent of a pack of four 80-pound Rottweiler dogs that a family trusts because the family and the dogs know the rules. But let that family go off to  church, a movie, a school play, or the grocery store and someone see their home a suitable place for a burglary... four 80-pound Rottweilers make a predatory unit slightly more dangerous than a 320-pound tiger in the mangrove swamps of Bengal. The Pearl Harbor attack was a bolt out of the blue, and Hitler declaring war on the USA was a huge blunder. For that, key figures of the German and Japanese governments would pay grievous prices.  

History moves fast in a Crisis Era, but it often moves in unpredictable ways.

So what did I see a year ago in the event of a Trump victory?

I saw him offending nearly a majority of the electorate no matter what he did as President. His rhetoric is rigid, reflecting a rigid set of values, and it offends too many sensibilities for him to win over people from among those who voted against him. The 46% of the vote that he got is the maximum that he could get under any circumstances. People who dislike him are given no cause to be proud of being an American except to show how uncharacteristic he is of America, let alone of prior Presidents. Getting 46% of the vote? That is about what Dukakis got in 1988 and McCain got in 2008, and both are considered electoral losers -- decisively so.

Contrast John F. Kennedy, who barely won the Presidency, and who had the ability to infuse optimism in people who did not support him initially. If one feels good about oneself one is likely to feel good about many things that over which one has little control -- like one's employer, the economic system, popular culture, and the political process. Was America ever happier than during "Camelot"? Maybe unless one was a Southern black left out of it, but that seemed likely to change. To be sure, Donald Trump is far from being as competent as FDR and as honest as Obama as he could be -- but he is as incompetent at infusing competence as Kennedy was good at it. If you think this a partisan screed, then replace "FDR" with Lincoln, "Obama" with Eisenhower", and "Kennedy" with "Theodore Roosevelt" or even "Reagan". If Trump isn't FDR, Obama, or Kennedy, then he isn't Lincoln, Eisenhower, Theodore Roosevelt, or even Reagan. Of the eight Presidents mentioned  in that group, all but two are on about everyone's Top Fifteen list of prior Presidents (all but Trump and either Reagan or Obama, the choice between Reagan and Obama being on where one is on the political spectrum if they seem so dissimilar). So far Donald Trump is a disaster.  

If you thought Obama polarizing for what he is (looking as un-Presidential as he could possibly look even if his political background is fairly typical for a President, someone successful at every level of politics up to the Senate or a Governorship), Donald Trump is unlike any President in the last 120 years. He is a President without precedent, which would be fine if he were decidedly above average in political ability -- and he gets so much wrong that he looks catastrophically unfit to rule.

I thought America too wise to fall for a crass demagogue. I thought very wrong.  

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.

[Bob Butler 54]

And we have Breitbert's spin on things.  Exclusive – Brent Bozell: The Slow Death of the Republican Party

Basically, the Republicans have made a whole bunch of promises...  and broke all of them.  They are about to lose the support of their base, and with it much else.  Other entries in this thread suggest where the support is flowing to.  Brietbart is suggesting it will stay in the far right.

A little soon to tell. 

Might not have been ideal to punt the Brietbart editor.  "You're fired!"

[pbrower2a]

Another national poll, this time from Pew. I watch nationwide polls from Gallup (they appear daily) and statewide polls, as those portend the critical elections for the President and for Governors and Senators in the appropriate years. Other pollsters might be interesting more for data that the pollsters offer. That's how this poll from Pew Research Center works. It's less flattering than recent Gallup polls (about 63% as opposed to 60%), but that is less important than the wealth of data subdividing attitudes toward the President.

This graphic explains much:



(my comment)

Most approval polls ask about overall view of the President or some other relevant politician or groups thereof. This one subdivides polling into questions of issues and conduct. Not surprisingly, President Trump has few issues that resonate with any but a few Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents (about 6%), but he is OK with about 69% of Republicans or Republican-leaning independents. Of course in this highly-polarized society, 69% satisfaction  as "many but not all, or almost all" is weak.

Its with conduct that things go really bad for this President. Conduct can be the difference between integrity and corruption, a sane foreign policy and disaster, and between effective responses to disasters (storms, floods, earthquakes, forest fires) and worse-than-expected calamity. It is the difference between acting in accordance with precedent and protocol on matters of law and fostering legal anarchy. It is the difference between effective responses to clear and present danger  or making things worse than they might otherwise be. It is also the difference between soothing the public ans offending mass sensibilities.

An agenda can be reduced as a President and Congressional majorities change from one Party to another. Such has sorted itself out in the past, and will do so again. What such changes cannot do is to undo the ugliest deeds of history. No matter what we do we cannot undo the Slave Trade, the Trail of Tears, or the Holocaust. I have my fear that this President can do something that leads the grandson of the Eternal President of the Tyrannical Empire of Korea to turn some vibrant city into a mass of cinders and broken building material. Much can be done to prevent that now, like the President kissing up to China at every possible opportunity. But if the President does something incompetent we will find no way of undoing mass death in a Japanese or South Korean city.

Today I believe that most Republicans would be extremely happy with a President who has a right-wing agenda (abortion ban, outlawing same-sex marriage, tax shifts from income to consumption, evisceration of unions, regulatory relief, undoing Obamacare) who conducts himself much like Obama. Considering how dangerous the capricious conduct of President Trump has been so far, I would prefer such over someone with a liberal agenda and Trump-like behavior. Personal freedom and national survival matter far more than the economic, cultural, and social agenda of the day. The first two do not return easily. The others? That's why we have elections.

At this point my prediction of Donald Trump as a catastrophic failure stands. His behavior confirms and even intensifies my initial fear of him as President.

The next effective, conservative President of the United States of America will act much more like Barack Obama than like Donald Trump.  

......

Among Republicans, this chart shows that Republicans are getting queasy about a President who shows little respect for established wisdom within their own Party:



(again my comment):

I would go further: I would suggest that he look to conservative Republicans of the past, like Ronald Reagan. President Reagan would have never delivered that offensive, mealy-mouthed statement about the moral equivalence between the fascistic Right and those opposed. Truth be told, conservatives hate fascists unless the conservatives are sell-outs or fools.

But I remember the Trump campaign. This fellow praised dictators and not the usual heroes of American conservatives like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Note that when Margaret Thatcher took swipes at the Argentine occupation of the Falkland Islands she lambasted the Argentine dictatorship as a fascist regime. And it was the arch-conservative, traditionalist and even reactionary Sir Winston Churchill who recognized Adolf Hitler for the demon that he was and had the intellectual integrity to leave no ambiguity of the rectitude of his cause.

If I didn't mention Eisenhower -- you know from my posting record how similar I see the two in behavior and temperament. If the next Republican President does not appear until after the current Crisis, then I expect the taste to be for a sixty-something, mature Reactive. Except for going from age 45 to age 55. Obama fit that pattern well.

...now for some man-on-the-street (strictly speaking, respondent on the phone) expressions. I can't make these up.



On his agenda:

[Bob Butler 54]

(08-30-2017, 12:19 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: If I didn't mention Eisenhower -- you know from my posting record how similar I see the two in behavior and temperament. If the next Republican President does not appear until after the current Crisis, then I expect the taste to be for a sixty-something, mature Reactive. Except for going from age 45 to age 55. Obama fit that pattern well.

I'm not sure how much Eisenhower counts.  He's a war hero who could have won under either party.  He didn't try to fight FDR's perspective or agenda.  I respect him a lot, but don't see him as a partisan trying to fight the other factions perspective.  He was in power during the high, a period where the prior crisis's values are forced on everybody.  As such, he had a role to play, and he played it reasonably well.

[pbrower2a]

I saw two statewide approval polls of the President. The one in Florida is flawed for having so many undecided as it does, but in it President Trump is down 37-47. He had typically been slightly underwater in polling in Florida or about even, but that 37% suggests a possible collapse of support. Who knows? Maybe he is over-exposed at Mar-a-Lago, and the more that people get to know him the less they like him. Or could it be his mangled response to violence at Charlottesville, Virginia?

In West Virginia, he still is ahead 48-39, which is far below recent polls that showed his approval just above 60%. This could be a statistical freak, but in the context of the Florida poll, it might suggest the start of a collapse in support. In a slow building of support, disapproval tends to go to 'undecided' and 'undecided' often goes to 'approval'. Support tends to build slowly, as I saw with Obama in 2008. The collapse of approval tends to be more sudden, but it goes in stages with many of those recently approving becoming undecided and many of those undecided going to disapproval.

[pbrower2a]

(08-30-2017, 04:39 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(08-30-2017, 12:19 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: If I didn't mention Eisenhower -- you know from my posting record how similar I see the two in behavior and temperament. If the next Republican President does not appear until after the current Crisis, then I expect the taste to be for a sixty-something, mature Reactive. Except for going from age 45 to age 55. Obama fit that pattern well.

I'm not sure how much Eisenhower counts.  He's a war hero who could have won under either party.  He didn't try to fight FDR's perspective or agenda.  I respect him a lot, but don't see him as a partisan trying to fight the other factions perspective.  He was in power during the high, a period where the prior crisis's values are forced on everybody.  As such, he had a role to play, and he played it reasonably well.

I see a generational similarity. I think of Obama as the best sort of Reactive leader possible*, the sort who shows reverence for protocol and precedent as a way of avoiding trouble. That might be pre-seasonal in a Crisis Era, but even if Obama is more liberal than the political average of the time and Eisenhower was a bit more conservative, such marks the two well. Obama is just too pragmatic to be a Boomer (and in view of the lack of pragmatism of Boom leaders so far the pragmatism is refreshing), and he is not the reckless optimist that a liberal GI or Millennial might be.  A Kennedy-like leader when Obama was President would have been off by about a full saeculum, which would be awkward.

I see an analogy between school desegregation (Eisenhower) and same-sex marriage (Obama) as expanding human rights. Eisenhower may have been unenthusiastic, but he recognized a Supreme Court ruling as the essence of the rule of law and went along with it rigidly.  Obama chose to do nothing, letting the Supreme Court make its decision.

*the worst sort of Reactive leader possible? Here's a more recent example than the usual choice from the last Crisis Era:



(US PSYOP leaflet)

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (Arabic: أبو مصعب الزرقاوي‎‎, ’Abū Muṣ‘ab az-Zarqāwī, Abu Musab from Zarqa;  English pronunciation (help·info); October 20, 1966 – June 7, 2006), born Ahmad Fadeel al-Nazal al-Khalayleh (أحمد فضيل النزال الخلايلة, ’Aḥmad Faḍīl an-Nazāl al-Ḫalāyla), was a Jordanian jihadist who ran a paramilitary training camp in Afghanistan. He became known after going to Iraq and being responsible for a series of bombings, beheadings, and attacks during the Iraq War, reportedly "turning an insurgency against US troops" in Iraq "into a Shia-Sunni civil war".[1] He was sometimes known as "Shaykh of the slaughterers".[2]

He formed al-Tawhid wal-Jihad in the 1990s, and led it until his death in June 2006. Zarqawi took responsibility, on several audio and video recordings, for numerous acts of violence in Iraq including suicide bombings and hostage executions. Zarqawi opposed the presence of U.S. and Western military forces in the Islamic world, as well as the West's support for the existence of Israel. In late 2004 he joined al-Qaeda, and pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden. After this al-Tawhid wal-Jihad became known as Tanzim Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn, also known as al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), and al-Zarqawi was given the al-Qaeda title "Emir of Al Qaeda in the Country of Two Rivers".[3]

In September 2005, he declared "all-out war" on Shi'ites in Iraq, after the Iraqi government offensive on insurgents in the Sunni town of Tal Afar.[4] He dispatched numerous suicide bombers throughout Iraq to attack American soldiers and areas with large concentrations of Shia militias. He is also thought to be responsible for the 2005 bombing of three hotels in Amman, Jordan.[5] Zarqawi was killed in a targeted killing by a joint U.S. force on June 7, 2006, while attending a meeting in an isolated safehouse in Hibhib, a small village approximately 8 km (5.0 mi) west-northwest of Baqubah. One United States Air Force F-16C jet dropped two 500-pound (230 kg) guided bombs on the safehouse.[6]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Musab_al-Zarqawi

This fellow makes Dubya look like an exemplar of refined principle by contrast.

[pbrower2a]

Zogby polling supplied eleven statewide polls of Presidential approval and disapproval today:

The good news: I found eleven state polls of approval, some of states that rarely get polled and one that, to my recent consternation, had not ever been polled since Election Day.



The bad news: it's by the much-maligned pollster Zogby.

The reports (approval- disapproval)

FL 45-52
IN 48-48 (first poll!)
KY 52-44
MI 38-57
MO 46-40 (first poll!)
MT 49-46
ND 51-44 (first poll!)
OH 45-52 (the big prize in polling if valid)
PA 40-55
WI 40-57
WV 48-48

(Some of the polling supplanted is the Gallup composite from January to July. At least this polling is more current than the composite whose age averages April and precedes some changes in the political universe).

President Trump won every one of these states in 2016. Disapproval ratings of 52 or higher in states with 93 electoral votes suggest big trouble for any re-election bid in states that have 93 electoral votes. Add to this, should Indiana be at all close... a Republican is invariably winning the state by 10% or more if he is winning nationally.

The graphic is hard to read. and I hope that I read these right.

Polling is consistent with what I have seen for Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, so if the polling uses the same methodology for the other states, then this polling could well be OK.

Here are some matchups -- Donald Trump vs. Elizabeth Warren:



In these matchups, Warren picks up all states in which Trump disapproval is 52 or higher... and Missouri. In view of polls of Arizona and Iowa in which President Trump has a disapproval rating of 52 or higher, I can see her beating Trump almost as severely as Obama beat McCain. She is within 6% of Trump in Indiana, and no Republicans wins nationwide while winning Indiana in the single figures.

I have not been paying attention to individual matchups because there is no obvious front-runner among Democrats for the nomination in 2020... but this one is illustrative.








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)
..........................  44-47%  30%
..........................  40-43%  50%
..........................  35-39%  70%
.......................under  35%  90%

White - tie.


Now for the theme of disapproval as shown in the Gallup data and subsequent polls:




navy under 40
blue 40-43
light blue 44-47
white 48 or 49
pink 50-54
red 55-59
maroon 60-69
reddish-black 70+

[pbrower2a]

(09-01-2017, 01:05 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: Much to the chagrin of ClassicXer, Trump has jumped the shark in the "woikin' stiff" states.

Speaking of whom....

I have seen nothing of him lately. Does he now have better things to do? Has he lost enthusiasm and faith in President Trump?

He is one person, and reality does not depend upon him even in his own mind.