Trump Job Approval Falls To 38% In New Poll
Last week was one of the worst week's the still-young Trump Administration has faced, and new tracking poll data is starting to reflect that.
Monday’s report on Gallup’s Daily Presidential Job Approval Tracking Poll has no good news for the Trump Administration:
President Trump’s approval rating has dropped to 38 percent, according to Gallup’s daily tracking poll.
The Monday number in the Gallup Daily Tracking poll is Trump’s lowest since April 1.
His approval dropped as low as 35 percent in late March.
According to Gallup’s records, Trump’s rating on his 115th day in office is lower than any of the last four presidents at the same point in their term.
This comes on the heels of a week that began with Trump’s firing of F.B.I. Director James Comey and the extent to which his Administration kept changing the story about why he had done so. As I detailed in successive posts beginning last Monday afternoon — see here, here, here, here, and here — the Administration’s explanation for why Comey was fired changed at least three to four times before Trump finally confirmed in an interview with Lester Holt of NBC News that he fired Comey at least in part because of the Bureau’s investigation of Russian interference in the election and the allegations regarding ties between Trump associates and Russian government officials. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the weekend ended with the President appearing to threaten Comey with the idea that he might have to fear if there were “tapes” of his conversations with Comey. Notwithstanding the gravity of the President apparently revealing the possible existence of a taping system in the White House, both Press Secretary Sean Spicer and the President himself have refused to comment on the obvious questions raised by that tweet. It’s worth noting, though, that when he was a Trump was a private businessman it was apparently a badly kept secret among his closest aides that he routinely recorded phone calls and meetings in his office. In the wake of these events, polling on the question of whether it was proper for Trump to fire Comey has been mixed, but they all show that most American’s do not support the action and that an overwhelming number of Americans want to see an independent investigation of all these allegations.
Looking at the polling averages, things continue to look bad for Trump. The RealClearPolitics polling average, for example, shows Trump at 40.9% approval and his disapproval average at 53.8%. On Pollster, it stands at 41.1% approval and 54.3% disapproval. Among Independents, Pollster’s average shows Trump’s average at 37.8% approval and 52.5% disapproval. As the RCP shows, the trend for Trump continues to be a bad one:
As I’ve said before, this is a bigger problem for Trump than his supporters will acknowledge.
Every President in recent memory has started off their time in office with genuinely positive job approval numbers. To a large degree, this is because voters appear to want to think the best of whoever the new POTUS is and want them to do the best job possible. How long that honeymoon lasts has varied, and often is related to things beyond the control of an individual POTUS. In recent times, though, it’s lasted for a considerable period. For Geoge W. Bush, it lasted basically four years but that’s pretty much because his numbers were sent into the stratosphere after 9/11 and it took a long time for that to fade. It wasn’t until after 2004, that Bush’s approval numbers began to sink thanks to a tightening economy and a seemingly endless war in Iraq. And, of course, he left office with one of the worst approval/disapproval ratios of any post-WW2 President with the exception of Nixon. For Obama, it wasn’t until well into his second year that his approval number had sunk to the point where there was even a slight majority that disapproved of his performance rather than approved. Obama’s numbers would fluctuate from there until 2012 when they bounced back just in time for the election, and after that, he remained mostly in positive territory for the remainder of his time in office. Trump started out in the negative and it hasn’t taken long, just 116 days, for him to reach point Buh didn’t reach until 2007. What that means for the future is hard to say but if it persists it’s going to hard for the Administration to have good weeks in the news cycle, and Republicans in Congress are likely to start to drift away from the Administration to save their own skins in the midterms. Finally, even if Trump does bounce back, one has to wonder what he’ll bounce back to. If he can’t get those two trend lines reversed, he’s going to face political trouble sooner rather than later.
And, my friends, we’re only at the end of Day 116.
It’ll go considerably lower when enough of the chumps finally wake up to how badly this sleazebag has suckered them.
Comey was fired on Tuesday. Now it turns out that on Wednesday when Don-the-Con welcomed the Russian ambassadors into the Oval office, with only Soviet Press present, it was to spill highly classified and sensitive intelligence to them.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-revealed-highly-classified-information-to-russian-foreign-minister-and-ambassador/2017/05/15/530c172a-3960-11e7-9e48-c4f199710b69_story.html?utm_term=.57a361de6f82
What’s it going to take for some Republicans to say”enough”?
Remember the uproar over Clinton’s handling of emails?
We now have a POTUS openly committing treason…and Congress is supine.
I know I sound like a broken record, but I really don’t think his low approval ratings are as big a problem as many may assume. He managed to win the election with the worst favorability ratings ever recorded for a major-party nominee. Despite winning 46% of the vote, only 37% of Americans had a favorable view of him on Election Day. If anything, his favorables (according to RCP) have seen a slight uptick since then. A recent poll suggested that far more Hillary voters have buyers’ remorse than Trump voters.
The fact is that a large number of people voted for Trump while holding their noses. And the majority of them would probably vote for him again in a heartbeat. It’s the “Yes, Trump is awful, but…” contingent, the people who argued that however bad Trump was, Hillary was worse. That was always a ludicrous rationalization, and it shows the lengths to which people went to avoid facing the obvious truth of Trump’s profound unfitness for the office.
People in this category have the freedom to criticize Trump without questioning their support for him. This means that we can’t view these job approval polls the same way we’d view them for past presidents, when there was never such a large number of supposedly reluctant supporters. In a way it’s Trump’s secret weapon, because it means his support is partially invisible, causing him to look weaker than he actually is–which was a major factor in the election. Of course these numbers are still a problem for him, and he’d be a lot better off if they were above water, but at the very least he is, somewhat deceptively, more popular than past presidents with the same numbers. That may not be the greatest news in the world for him, but it’s a reality we need to face before we gloat.
I don’t think his supporters care. The GOP Congress does not care. If he goes below 30% then MAYBE they begin to care. They won and think they have a mandate.
Steve
@Kylopod:
Don’t you think that when he doesn’t build the wall, doesn’t throw all the Mexicans out of the country, and doesn’t eject all the Muslims that at least some of the saps will awaken? He ran on those promises.
Of course, those who elected him precisely because he’s a boor and a boob will continue to support him.
I work at a hardware store. I literally heard a guy say this afternoon, “Everything trump said he was gonna do, he’s doing.”
I will not even dream of arguing with someone who can believe that.
And the guy who said it was not an idiot, just a normal person, here in North Florida. I don’t think it’s easy for us to conceive of what life is like for people who get all their news from Fox and talk radio. It’s a different reality.
Here’s the headline at foxnews.com right now:
If you scroll down you’ll see a singe line about Trump leaking classified info on the left side in 6-pt type.
Today’s news about how Trump carelessly gave away highly classified information to the Russians will only hurt things more.
@steve:
They know they don’t have a mandate. They also know they have all the power.
@gVOR08:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/05/comey_s_gone_and_the_gop_doesn_t_care_is_there_anything_trump_could_do_to.html
He said he’d keep this country safe, didn’t he? This idiotic, amateur move disclosing intelligence information is the polar opposite of keeping the country safe. He has just done damage to an intelligence chain we need, and lost the trust of an ally. He is a menace.
@CSK:
It depends what they were seeking when they voted for him. First of all, for a lot of his supporters, I have the sense that what they like about him is his attitude more than his concrete goals. One of his surrogates last year, Rep. Chris Collins, called it a “virtual wall,” and I think that captures the way a lot of his supporters think: they’re more interested in the symbology of keeping the brown people out than the physical presence of a wall. Besides, it is entirely not out of the realm of possibility that Trump will simply claim to have built a wall, even when he hasn’t. And at least some of his supporters will eat it up.
Moreover, Trump’s rise from the start depended heavily on people seeing what they wanted to see. Trump depicted America as a dystopian hellhole of 40% unemployment, soaring crime, Mexican rapists, and so on. To anyone who actually believed any of this, thinking that Trump has turned it around should be relatively easy. Once you’re accepting stuff that’s contrary to what’s actually happening in the country, you’ll believe anything. If Trump claims to have brought the jobs back, I guarantee you, the vast majority of his supporters will think so too. Even if they’re in the process of being laid off.
Look, for instance, at the woman who thought Obamacare was Trumpcare, a law that has not even been enacted yet. That’s the level of delusion we’re dealing with here.
God, I feel like I’m repeating myself. Wasn’t I just saying this stuff here a few weeks ago? I fear I’m starting to sound like a liberal version of Superdestroyer (remember him?), constantly predicting the eternal One Party State for Republicans, so let me be clear: I’m not suggesting that Trump or the Republicans are politically invincible. Far from it. But I do think a lot of Dems are overconfident about the GOP’s demise, in a way that’s reminiscent of their attitude before the election.
@Kylopod: I’ve wondered how many Trump votes were protest votes, i.e., votes cast by people who thought Hillary was going to win so they didn’t think their vote would matter and they could cast a vote for Trump as a protest without having to worry about him actually being elected. Have you seen any information on that?
This seems to be the opportune time to get a third party going. The Democrats are not faring well, and Trump continues to bumble and fumble. Even with control of the White House, the Senate, and the House; the Republicans can’t get it going on issues that the American working class people are wanting: health insurance reform, an income tax cut for the middle class, immigration reform that includes “tough vetting” (Hillary’s words) and stringent procedures, aggressive campaign against terrorist organizations, intrastructure improvements including upgrading the electrical grid, government reform (spending cuts, less regulations), and college loan relief.
These are issues that the middle class want addressed and acted on. Most Americans have an unfavorable view of either party. A sensible third party could get a lot of support and be in good position by 2020.
Our two parties: “tweedle dee and tweedle dumb”
@Steve V:
It’s occurred to me. I definitely think some of those who stayed home or voted third party were doing so under the assumption that Clinton was a certain winner–especially in states like Wisconsin and Michigan that she was supposed to have in the bag.
It goes both ways, however. I’m sure there were Trump voters who stayed home believing he was going to lose so it wasn’t worth the bother. Clinton really did have a superior ground game, which helped her win states like Nevada (one of the only states where she did significantly better than the polls) and New Hampshire. That just goes to show that the level of support Trump received was not a ceiling. It could have been worse.
@gVOR08:
These Trump-loving fascists (and make no mistake, that is what they are) think that they have a mandate among those who matter, and that the rest of the country doesn’t matter.
Hence, the right-wing meme about ignoring the voters of California, New York and Chicago. They honestly believe 62 million people who carry the water for the rest of the country don’t matter at all.
@Jen:
Except it didn’t happen. Only in the eyes of yet another “unnamed source” – and all you Keith Olbermann wannabes – but not the principals.
Carry on.
@Steve V:
Exit polls did not show Democratic defections at above-average levels, so that seems unlikely.
Ultimately, the problem is that many Republicans who disliked Trump voted for him, anyway. Instead of fixing their party so that a Trump could not happen again, they stayed loyal. Yes, they’re idiots.
@Kylopod: The Democratic Party leadership wrote off the south some time ago. Maybe they need to take another look at the middle class people (“intolerables”). They can’t win by hibernating out in California.
@Guarneri: Remember when Nixon famously said, “I am not a crook”? Nixon had been accused of a lot of things, but not of being a crook. McMaster very artfully denied Trump said a lot of things, but not what WAPO reported he said. Tell you anything?
@Tyrell:
This must set some kind of record. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen this much nonsense in three short sentences.
@gVOR08: Our frequent flyer friend whose handle makes me think of guano is denying that classified material was given up by our President. He is a fool; I’m not here to defend him.
Just had an attack of pedantry and had to mention that the Nixon quote “I am not a crook” was not said in the context of the Watergate business. It was said in the situation of his being accused of having failed to pay some taxes and led to the release of his returns which of course became the precedent that Mr Trump violated. In the end Pres Dick was judged to have avoided some half-million dollars and had to pay up. So he ended up being judged a crook there too.
@gVOR08: @JohnMcC: If we want to get really pedantic, you both seem to be using the word crook as more or less a synonym for “thief.” Technically, it just means anyone who’s crooked, i.e. criminal and corrupt (usually of a nonviolent nature). Here’s how the online dictionaries define it:
(Google) a person who is dishonest or a criminal.
(Dictionary.com) a dishonest person, especially a sharper, swindler, or thief.
(Merriam Webster) a person who engages in fraudulent or criminal practices.
@Guarneri:
The story that Trump leaked classified materials to your Russian friends has two sources to confirm it.
That’s three more sources than anything you’ll find in Zero Hedge.
@Kylopod:
That poll says has Trump leading Hillary 43-40. Meaning that, faced with the option of facing Hillary the beast, some percent of his voters are not sure what to do . On the other hand, Hillary’s result is easily explained by the fact that Americans hate losers (and don’t care for her..). Notice that basically no Hillary voters moves to Trump -they all move to undecided.
@panda: BTW, the only poll I’ve found testing him against non-Hillary Democrats have them leading him by everything from 14 (Biden) to 3 (Booker) points, with Trump’s numbers at 40-42 in all test runs- very close to his number against HRC. Which is to say, if Trump’s standing in 4 years is the same it is today, he will be underdog against any Democratic candidate who manages to consolidate the party.
@panda: BTW, the only poll I’ve found testing him against non-Hillary Democrats have them leading him by everything from 14 (Biden) to 3 (Booker) points, with Trump’s numbers at 40-42 in all test runs- very close to his number against HRC. Which is to say, if Trump’s standing in 4 years is the same it is today, he will be underdog against any Democratic candidate who manages to consolidate the party.
@Guarneri:
@panda:
I’m not attempting a prediction of where we’ll be 3.5 years from now. I’m done with that game. All I’m saying is… well, let’s put it this way. Obama very briefly saw his Gallup approval ratings sink to 38% in mid-2011, but by the time of Election Day the following year, they had risen to over 50%. And Dubya had negative approval ratings through much of his second term, but when he was running for reelection in 2004, like Obama in 2012 they were middling to positive.
I assume that if either of them had had 38% (or lower) at the time of their attempted reelection, it’s virtually impossible they would have won. But if Trump has those sorts of ratings on Election Day 2020, I really don’t think it’s a sure thing he would lose. That’s my point.
In fact, it’s almost not hypothetical, since he did have 37% favorable ratings in Nov. of last year and yet still managed to win. I know favorable ratings aren’t the same as job approval ratings, but they’re close enough that you can’t totally count out the scenario I outlined.
I believe Trump’s negative ratings give a distorted picture because there’s a myriad of “Yes, Trump is awful, but…” voters out there. How large a group this is is hard to say, since they’re safely hidden within these numbers.
You might respond that this is more a function of Hillary’s unpopularity, and that it will dissipate as long as we get a decent candidate next time around. I don’t buy it. That’s not to suggest Hillary wasn’t a weak candidate: she was. But people made her out to be an ogre. Republicans would have depicted any Democrat that way, of course. But she didn’t become the second most unpopular candidate in history through Republicans alone.
There were a lot of factors, not the least of which is deep-seated sexism in the populace. But I think there was something else going on here as well. I remember one fellow I talked to in 2016 who was a Bernie Sanders fan and a supporter of single-payer health care, and when I caught up with him after the primaries I discovered he had decided to cast his vote for Donald Trump. His reason? He said that Hillary was a “threat to the country.”
The comment practically took my breath away. What was so bizarre about it was that it didn’t even seem to fit the usual narrative of Hillary haters, who typically depict her as corrupt, but not exactly dangerous. On the other hand, a lot of people think Trump is a threat to the country. It was like this fellow took the most frequent criticism of Trump and simply applied it to Hillary.
By no means am I trying to give the impression that this fellow was some prototypical Trump supporter. Far from it. He was weird and eccentric, and it’s not like there were a lot of lefty Bernie Bros cheering for The Donald. The point I’m trying to make is that I’ve gradually been coming to the conclusion that Hillary’s massive unpopularity (which was only a relatively recent phenomenon–just five years ago she was extraordinarily popular) wasn’t something wholly independent of Trump, something which would have happened with or without him as the GOP nominee. I think it was, in part, a psychological strategy by voters who had at least some partial awareness of Trump’s unfitness for the presidency, and they rationalized it by casting the negativity on her.
That’s the only explanation that makes any sense if you think about it. After all, doesn’t it seem a tad convenient that the two most unpopular candidates in history would just happen to run in the same year? If you wrote a book with that premise, it would be dismissed as overly contrived. What I’m saying is that it’s not a coincidence, because her unpopularity was essentially invented out of whole cloth, just so people could cope with the fact that the GOP embraced the truly, objectively worst candidate of all time. Hence a weak and uninspiring candidate was transformed into a monstrous one, just so people didn’t have to admit there was a true monster in the race.
It wasn’t just Trump supporters who did this, of course; the notion that there was equivalence in any way, shape, or form between Trump and Clinton was the most enduring myth of the 2016 race, embraced as a fundamental narrative by much of the press. It seeped into numerous people’s heads, including even some who voted for Clinton in the end.
Will we see the same thing repeated in 2020 with a different Democratic candidate? I have no idea. My point is this: it’s easy to underestimate the extent to which people find ways to rationalize away Trump’s awfulness, and I think that’s going to continue for the foreseeable future.
@Guarneri: The statements issued by the administration were very, very carefully worded. McMaster said the WaPo story “as reported” is false. That’s a dodge, right there. He (and Tillerson) then go on to say that during the discussion “no sources, methods, or current military actions” were talked about. Fine–but that isn’t what the WaPo and NYT reported.
So there’s a dodge in the opening line, and then the statements go on to deny something that wasn’t alleged. Curious, no?
Since there are transcripts and notes, let’s hand them over to someone truly independent to make the call. I would be more than happy to be wrong on this, because this is serious, and it shouldn’t be partisan.
The trouble for the president is that it is all too easy to picture him going off the prepared script, and saying something careless while he’s bragging.
One of my favorite contradictions was how this racist conspiracy-theory wielding con man casino and strip club owner was somehow embraced by many religious voters instead of being viewed as the very worst and more like a judgment from God than anything. His severe shortcomings and personal failings should have been more than obvious to any person with any sense of spiritual discernment whatsoever. That Trump is failing so badly is not far from unexpected….
Trump, on Twitter, is saying that he has the “absolute right” to share information with the Russians about airline safety, etc.
That doesn’t sound like a denial of the story. It sounds like a justification after the fact.
He hadn’t cleared the sharing of this intel with the country/ally that sourced it. Any way you cut this pie, what he did was irresponsible.
@CSK:
Did the ones who vote GOP because they hoped to abolish abortion ever wake up? Have the ones who believe that tax cuts always stimulate economic growth ever wake up? (This one, I’ll admit, is not as fair in that there are two cohorts who claim to believe it, but one doesn’t care that it’s not true–they only want tax cuts for themselves.) Why would they wake up about these factors over the others?
You can fool some of the people all of the time–and that’s usually enough to turn a good profit.
@gVOR08: It probably doesn’t because Guarnari is one of the guys who would still support Trump even if he “shot someone on 5th Avenue.”
@Guarneri:
Except Dumb Don just admitted that it did.
You sycophants are so easily suckered into the con.
What does he have to do to make you see how badly you fwcked up when you voted for that fat orange blob?
@teve tory:
Many Congressional Republicans are hoping that they can jam through their radical Right agenda before :
(1) Trump begins to auction off Oval Office memorabilia on Russian E-Bay and,
(2) the 2018 campaign season is in full acid-bath mode.
breitbart’s take:
Deep State Leaks Highly Classified Info to Washington Post to Smear President Trump
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/05/15/deep-state-leaks-highly-classified-info-to-washington-post-to-smear-president-trump/
@teve tory:
Breitbart’s editors must think that the The Onion is competition.