05-16-2019, 09:15 AM
(05-16-2019, 02:44 AM)Kinser79 Wrote:The distribution of polling results has something like 42% approval as an average, with 39% as likely as 45%. He is doing worse than any other President since Truman at this stage. Only three Presidents ended up with a higher share of the vote than their approval at a similar state, and those were Nixon, Ford, and Reagan. With all three the gain was 3% or less. Nixon and Reagan of course won blow-out landslides with 49 states, but their positions were with approval in the mid-fifties -- and they both faced seriously-flawed challenges.Quote:Trump is “in the same structural position as Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter,”
Well just that fragment of a sentence means I can ignore this article even if I didn't know that already by hearing it was published in the New York Times (which is a shadow of its former self in reputation--seriously is there nothing that Boomers touch that doesn't turn into shit?).
Trump's aggregate polls have him sitting at around 45% approval when running against an amorphous blob that is the DNC. Get him against an other human and he'll blow them out of the water. Get him against Joe Biden, arguably the only person the Democrats have who could remotely take him on and he'll hit Landslide territory.
The data for approval numbers:
Quote:Average presidential approval ratings through this point in term via ABC/Post and Gallup polling:
Kennedy 73%
W Bush 71%
HW Bush 70%
Johnson 69%
Eisenhower 67%
Nixon 58%
Truman 56%
Obama 55%
Reagan 55%
Carter 52%
Clinton 51%
Ford 47%
Trump 38%
Reagan gained 3% and Nixon gained 2%. I know, I know -- nobody is going to win much more than about 60% of the popular vote in any Presidential election. I do not know what to make of HW and Clinton, as they had three-way races. Ford was behind, but he made it close -- not close enough.
Unless the GOP vote for President splinters with a conservative rival to Trump taking 5% or more of the popular vote, Trump will do better than to get 38% of the popular vote. Hoover got 40% and Carter got 41%, which suggests the floor for an incumbent who has control of his Party.
Most lose significantly from their approval number if they choose to run for re-election. Obama lost 4%, Ike lost 9%, and Carter lost 11%.
Note well that Trump is way behind Ford. Ford did not have much time in which to play catch-up, but Trump does. Still, Trump has a far-bigger hole, and he seems not to be gaining unless one puts undue stock in movements inside the margin of error of about 4%.
Trump is 9% behind Ford, who is 8% behind Reagan and Obama. (I think Obama had just whacked Osama bin Laden, and he might have done better in the 2012 election were it not for 'excessive melanin').
Are polls the definitive expression of political reality? No -- elections are. This said, I have seen lots of electoral losers way behind in the polls saying even on the eve of an election that the only poll that counts is the vote. They still lose big.
Trump is not winning America over to his agenda. He may have a solid hold over some constituencies and regions, but I look at the polling numbers and see someone who must get his act together. I see someone devoid of the political moxie for doing so.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.