Donald Trump: polls of approval and favorability

[pbrower2a]

https://civiqs.com/results/approve_presi...e&map=true

Caveats:

1. It is over three months. Most statewide polls are over much-shorter times, so I can't relate these results to statewide polls over a weekend -- which is most of what I have, or even the month-long polling of Morning Consult.

2. Two national polls already show Trump support undergoing significant drops following the release of the  Mueller report. See below. Although there were apparently no statewide polls taken in the weekend following the release of the redacted report, there will be such reports. Even the three polling results that I have for the three narrowest Trump wins of 2016 (and these come from an internal poll for the Bernie Sanders campaign), the last three that I have gotten, are from before the Mueller Report exposing the ethical cesspool of the Trump campaign of 2016.

3. We can expect some systematic faults of sampling by any pollster on populations  that will distort results. The question about such remains: who has the faults, and which ones are significant?

We can go with the argument "but this pollster got this election right to an extent that someone else did not get so right". Such implies a difference in modeling of any election. Trump obviously wins re-election with an electorate like those of 2010 or 2014, and obviously loses with an electorate of 2006, 2008, 2012, or 2018. 2016? Which way is the wind blowing? Who can say what sort of electorate we will have?  

Concurrences:

1. This is the same pollster in all fifty states. It is apples to apples, oranges to oranges.

2. Trump polling has been remarkably stable, at least until the release of the Mueller Report.

3. We get to see results from states that don't get polled often.

4. This could be a contrast to what we see in the last week of April and from early May. I am not predicting polling results as the result of events, even if the Mueller Report is a huge event.

From this collection of data exclusively (except that I am guessing that Trump has no chance to win Dee Cee):



Trump, net approval positive -- raw approval

55% and higher 65
50-54% 116
under 50% 0

tie (white) 3

Trump, net negative approval -- raw approval

43-49% with disapproval under 51% if approval 45% or higher 56
40-42%, or under 45% if disapproval is over 51% 87
under 40% 201

(The District of Columbia is not shown in the polling, but we can all assume that it will go about 90-10 for just about any Democrat).

Note that I am changing my format here. I cannot see the President winning any state in which his disapproval is over 51%. If Obama could not win in 2012 in any state in which is disapproval rating ever got above 51%, then how could Trump barring some huge positive event? Obama is as slick and competent a campaigner and political strategist as we have seen in decades, and to get re-elected he had to be that slick and competent. At this I in practice give Trump much leeway. I must -- you know my bias. I thoroughly loathe him, and I thought Obama a fine President.

But this said, any state in maroon is practically certain to give Trump a double-digit loss, and any state in red has a high likelihood of giving him at the least a high-double-digit loss. States in pink or the one in white will be the ones to watch. Nothing is in light blue, so there is no state in which he is up 49-47 or so, but it is worth noting that Trump approval is at 50% in Ohio, South Carolina, and Texas... and at a mere 51% in Indiana.

So what about Indiana? Since the 1920s, no Republican nominee for President has won nationwide without winning Indiana by a double-digit margin. Even in the two elections in which the Republican won the electoral college without winning a plurality of the vote, the winning Republican (Dubya in 2000 and Trump in 2016) the Republican won the state by a double-digit margin. The disapproval number is just too high and the approval number is just too low  to offer the state as a ten-point win for Trump in 2020.  Indiana does not seem to be drifting Democratic, and it is not as if Indiana will be making voting easier to the benefit of Hoosier Democrats (mail-in or early voting). If you are a Democrat and hear at 7 PM that Trump has a 53-46 win in Indiana, you can consider that a very good sign.

How good do I think Obama was? Basically, the next effective conservative President will behave much more like Obama than like Trump and will also be a chilly rationalist with similar acumen. Someone with the political skills of Reagan and the temperament of Eisenhower is a good President. Conservatives who want tax cuts, regulatory relief that outlasts the president, and an economic order that puts more responsibility on the common man to create wealth instead of blowing it will be better off with a conservative version of Barack Obama than with another Donald Trump Add to this -- contrast Obama to Trump on foreign policy, and Obama is the conservative with a mailed fist under the velvet glove, which is the right way for dealing with ISIS, North Korea, and perhaps Iran.