Donald Trump: polls of approval and favorability

[pbrower2a]

Now for a small part of the electorate, but one critical to the Republican vote in many states: the rural vote.





Comment:

Republicans have consistently won the rural vote  since at least 1968, losing it to Goldwater in 1964 and nearly splitting it with Wallace in 1968. Although the rural vote cannot on its own decide the Presidency, a nearly-even split of the rural vote makes a Democratic landslide a certainty. To be sure the rural vote has its splits, such as between North and South and between the farm and ranch vote. If Trump is winning one side of the split he is losing the other. Democrats can of course win the Presidency while being creamed in rural areas

The rural vote is large enough in some states that if the Democrats have a weak performance among urban and suburban voters (as is usually the case in Omaha and such smaller urban areas in the Great Plains region as Fargo, Grand Forks, Bismarck, Minot, Rapid City, Sioux Falls, and Lincoln (NE), then Republicans can win a state like Iowa or Ohio as they usually win the Dakotas and Nebraska. But in a state like North Dakota, the few areas that pass as urban are enough to flip the state if the rural areas are evenly split. In 2016 weak Democratic leads in urban and suburban areas allowed rural areas to decide such states as Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. If this rural near tie should hold in 2020, then a Presidential election involving Donald Trump will be a landslide for the Democratic nominee for President in the Electoral College.

The mathematical model is simple. Start by figuring that ranch country is relatively conservative, and the line between ranch country and farm country is around the 100th meridian of longitude. Let's look at three states: Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota.  Nebraska  has three districts that vote separately in the Electoral College.  NE-01 is eastern Nebraska (including Lincoln) except for Greater Omaha. Its rural areas are largely farm country. NE-02 is Greater Omaha, wherein the rural vote is negligible. NE-03 is central and western Nebraska, including Scottsbluff and Grand Island. Figuring that in an extremely bad year (like 1964) for a Republican, this area goes 55-45 Republican instead of 75-25, Trump will win it. But NE-02 will go Democratic in a bad year for Republicans, and if Donald Trump has an approval rating around 35%, he will go down to defeat there. Nebraska barely goes Democratic statewide, and the Democrat gets four of five electoral votes from Nebraska.

North Dakota? It's not an urban state, but it has urban areas -- Fargo, Grand Forks, and Bismarck -- that lean D in most years. Split the rural vote 50-50, and a Democrat wins the three electoral votes of North Dakota. South Dakota? Sioux Falls and Rapid City together went for Obama, so split the rural remainder of the state 50-50 and the Democrat wins. The Democrat wins ten of eleven votes that Republicans usually win. That's as many electoral votes as Indiana, Minnesota, or Wisconsin -- or Iowa and New Hampshire together.

But -- note that there are bigger prizes. Rural Michigan, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Ohio, and Wisconsin went strongly R in 2016, strongly enough to flip those states due to weak Democratic performances in urban and suburban areas. Trump came close to winning Minnesota, of all states, because of much the same. But even with weak performances by a Democrat in urban areas in those states, an incredibly-weak performance of the Republicans in rural areas seals those states (and possibly even Indiana) for the Democrat. 

Trump could be winning the rural South (barely) while losing the rural North (barely). But all states of the Mountain and Deep South have significant urban areas. Mississippi may be one of the most rural states, but even it has Jackson, Biloxi, Pascagoula, and some spillover suburbs of Memphis. That could be enough to flip Mississippi.

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OK, so why isn't Donald Trump getting a high approval in rural America? We are dealing with a more diverse category than you might expect.  Big cities like Atlanta and Cleveland surely have more in common than rural Ohio and rural Georgia. Republicans have relied heavily upon such themes as religion, guns, homosexuality, race, and patriotism. But Donald Trump is the most godless President that we have ever had. Attach the sexual attitudes of the late Hugh Hefner to the godless greed of Ayn Rand, and you get a city-slicker of the worst kind. Democrats will be wise to avoid discussing guns altogether. Homosexuality? I'm guessing that there's not much to attract gays and lesbians to rural America or to keep them from deciding to leave, so homosexuality isn't in the (rural) face. Neither is race in the lily-white farm or ranch country, at least Up North.

Patriotism? Now here's the tricky one. Rural America offers more than its share of members of America's Armed Services. But while parents of our fine soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines show pride, they might get scared if the President starts to get reckless about foreign policy.Americans may not be anti-war, but they are not for treating soldiers as cannon fodder for the glory of the President. There are plenty of ways for the president to lose, and for him to win re-election, he will need to win rural America decisively -- enough to offset places like Greater Detroit, Greater Cleveland, Greater Milwaukee, and Greater Philadelphia.

Polls added for New York and Virginia:

Approval



Trump ahead      Trump behind

55% or higher     45% to 49%
50% to 54%       40% to 44%  


45% to 49%       under 40%

Ties are in white.



Disapproval:



60% or higher  (deep red)
57% to 59%
55% to 56%
50% to 54%
46% to 49%
43% to 45%
42% or less

At this point, President Trump's supporters may already be saying that the only only poll that matters is the last one -- the election itself. So say mostly electoral losers. I have yet to see President Trump doing anything that gets a President re-elected, and he is lucky that the economy and the world still look like Obama's world. He did nothing to create that reality, yet he disparages Obama about as much as Gorbachev disparaged Brezhnev. Except that Gorbachev may have been the most decent leader in Russian and Soviet history except perhaps for Kerensky, Brezhnev was a corrupt kleptocrat, and Obama will continue to be seen as an above-average President and someone similar to him in temperament and integrity could easily be a default for the First Turning.

Let's put it this way: Donald Trump's team is down 6-1 in the second inning in  a baseball game in which Justin Verlander is the opposing pitcher. To be sure, only the final score matters, and there  are seven innings left, so it isn't over. Nobody in his right mind would give even odds, or even anything near even odds, for Trump's team to win that game.