Trump approval ratings thread 1.2

[BudgieForce]

Eh, Clinton started out the 2016 cycle very popular as well, and Trump started out as unpopular as he is now. The thing with Trump is that he has a core base of support and he has a strong ability, as Fuzzy Bear has pointed out, to bring his opponents' favorables way down. Once it's in the mud, it's his ball game. The Democrats need a candidate who's not only more popular, but also has a sort of teflon quality where stuff just bounces off him/her, and they have a cult core of supporters who feel themselves as part of a movement to provide resilience. Just "not being Trump" won't be enough.

He has a strong ability to do that among his own base, hence why so many Republicans who get on his bad side end up tanking in the polls. He didn't make Clinton unpopular. She made herself unpopular with terrible decisions as Secretary of State and beyond. All Trump did was seize on existing scandals that had already driven her favorables down bigly.

I do agree with the the last part, about the need for teflon and a 'movement' quality.

And I'm sure his 15 Republicans opponents all 'made themselves unpopular'? No. It was not just Hillary. Whenever he would go after someone in the GOP primaries, the person he went after came out worse for wear, even when the attacks were absurd and over the top. It's a talent of his.

Virginia just said Trump has sway with his own base. Trump's base is a majority of the republican electorate, hence why he tanked other republican candidates.

[Person Man]

No president has ever been this low and was reelected.

His only shot is if he can make his opponent as unpopular as him (or if he again draws one that is already unpopular, like Clinton). I'd say it is seriously debatable whether or not he can even do that. Hillary became very unpopular due to her own constant self-created scandals. All Trump did was attempt to amplify what was already there (email scandal, ensuing fbi investigation, clinton foundation, deplorables, etc).

If his numbers stay in the 30s or even low 40s, I'd say he is cooked.

The thing is that not only has a president with his low approvals has ever been elected, but no president has ever improved enough to be elected with their approvals so low at all. I imagine that he won't run if he gets a rung below this. The pols that have gotten lower were only lower because of polarization or in recent times because they couldn't run again, anyways.

Here are the scenarios I see-

Trump's poor choices start to have consequences, but voters choose not to hold all the little Trumps accountable in 2018.
- There is no D overreach. Trump is entirely responsible for what has happened. If Democrats are electable, they will get elected in 2020.

Things stay about the same and there is a only minor backlash where 10 or 20 R seats fall and they even gain 3 or 4 in the senate. This probably means that Republican control is the new normal.

The Democrats do really well and things stay good. This probably means that they will overreach and voter will give Trump the benefit of the doubt.  If also the economy goes to sh**t, I don't think having Democrats around to blame will save Trump.

So yeah. There has to be proof for Democrats to win in 2020 that Trump's asshole behavior is an actual problem.

[pbrower2a]

Gallup, 12/1

Approve 33 (-1)
Disapprove 62 (+2)

This equals Trump's worst-ever numbers in Gallup on both ends. 

After being mostly stable for a few weeks, movement over the last few days has been very bad for Trump:

11/28: 38/55 (-17)
11/29: 36/57 (-21)
11/30: 34/60 (-26)
12/1: 33/62 (-29)

It's still a little too early to say whether this is a real trend.  Gallup uses a 3-day rolling average, so one or two very good or bad samples can have effects that last a few days.  If it still looks like this next week, then I'd be willing to call it a trend.

Throughout November, the President's approval ratings have typically been in the high 30s and disapproval in the middle 50s. The change is outside the margin of error. It could be an outlier or it could represent a transitory event.

This said, the guilty plea by Michael Flynn will not go away. The tax bill that the President wants as does America's new aristocratic elite but the rest of America despises will not go away. I saw a really-bad favorability poll for the President in Colorado last week: 64% unfavorability. Colorado may be drifting D about as rapidly as West Virginia drifted R in the early part of this century, but hardly any state swings that fast. Disapproval for the President in California is at 68%, as if the difference between  Clinton getting 61% of the vote in California and Trump being rejected by 68% of voters has any legal effect. It's still 55 electoral votes whether a Democrat gets a tiny plurality or 70% of the vote.

If these horrid approval ratings stick, I think I have an explanation.

If there are any statewide polls this weekend, then such might corroborate the tracking poll.     

[Person Man]

Gallup, 12/1

Approve 33 (-1)
Disapprove 62 (+2)

This equals Trump's worst-ever numbers in Gallup on both ends. 

After being mostly stable for a few weeks, movement over the last few days has been very bad for Trump:

11/28: 38/55 (-17)
11/29: 36/57 (-21)
11/30: 34/60 (-26)
12/1: 33/62 (-29)

It's still a little too early to say whether this is a real trend.  Gallup uses a 3-day rolling average, so one or two very good or bad samples can have effects that last a few days.  If it still looks like this next week, then I'd be willing to call it a trend.

Throughout November, the President's approval ratings have typically been in the high 30s and disapproval in the middle 50s. The change is outside the margin of error. It could be an outlier or it could represent a transitory event.

This said, the guilty plea by Michael Flynn will not go away. The tax bill that the President wants as does America's new aristocratic elite but the rest of America despises will not go away. I saw a really-bad favorability poll for the President in Colorado last week: 64% unfavorability. Colorado may be drifting D about as rapidly as West Virginia drifted R in the early part of this century, but hardly any state swings that fast. Disapproval for the President in California is at 68%, as if the difference between  Clinton getting 61% of the vote in California and Trump being rejected by 68% of voters has any legal effect. It's still 55 electoral votes whether a Democrat gets a tiny plurality or 70% of the vote.

If these horrid approval ratings stick, I think I have an explanation.

If there are any statewide polls this weekend, then such might corroborate the tracking poll.     

It is very worrying if only a handful of states are responsible for most of the movement. Not only does that mean that Trump is more popular with the middle, it also means that some of these other states might start to see themselves as not really part of what is going on. That would probably take decades for it to become an issue if ever... or not.

[pbrower2a]

It is very worrying if only a handful of states are responsible for most of the movement. Not only does that mean that Trump is more popular with the middle, it also means that some of these other states might start to see themselves as not really part of what is going on. That would probably take decades for it to become an issue if ever... or not.

Colorado is probably still close to the middle. In 2016 it was competitive in the Presidential election.

We so far have a paucity of state polling. Most of what I have on my polling map is composites from national polling; thus an entity like Gallup releases the results of several polls from different times that were not originally separated by state but are  combined at some point.  Gallup in any poll (and I speak of Gallup because Gallup is more clear in its expression of its polling) gets a national poll based upon a national sampling that typically has too few respondents in any one state to give an accurate poll of that state. But get enough such data from the same state from polls at different times, and one gets enough data to give a picture of what a single poll would show.

The Gallup tracking poll that just appeared indicates a Presidency intensely unpopular in America. It cannot say whether the unpopularity arises from policies or from assessments of a personality. Most likely, both personality and policies  both interact.  

We need more statewide polling to establish whether the trend is confined to a few states reliably D over several elections or states rapidly lurching D (Colorado and Virginia?) I notice that a recent poll of Alabama suggested that although support for President Trump is stronger than opposition, the net support for the President is far lower than is the norm for previous Republican Presidents (Reagan and both Bushes, and anything before that is practically ancient history). I do not predict any statewide polling.  Trump would be OK in a re-election bid if his best 'losing' state (he will lose Michigan in 2020) would give him 32% of the vote and his worst 'winning' state is Pennsylvania, which lets him squeak by with 20 popular votes but is the difference between 252 electoral votes for him and 272 electoral votes. But that is a probabilistic freak, something indicating that someone rigged the election.

At this point I predict that the best projection of the 2020 vote is that the President gets 100% less the disapproval rating in a binary election. Thus if the disapproval rating for Trump is 57% in Michigan, then the most that Trump can get in Michigan is 43%. Could he win with 43% of the vote? Only if his opposition is split, as between conventional Democrats and a new and powerful Socialist or even Communist party.  But such does not yet loom.

At this point I must treat any immediate response to an outrageous deed or unpopular policy  of the President or a polarizing and unpopular piece of legislation as a temporary and reversible event. My main map is cautious and slow to respond, reflecting the paucity of polls so far. I expect that to change in about a month as Senate races and control of the House of Representatives will become more frequent as is the norm in all midterm elections. I do not make inferences of 'likely polling' from extrapolations of national tracking unless I so indicate.

OK. It is a reasonable assumption that the Democrats are not going to cut into the white vote for Republicans enough to put states in the Deep or Mountain South in play for any potential Presidential nominee in 2020, and that there is going to be no sudden lurch toward the 50-50 split in states that Republicans just do not win except in landslides like 1980. 1984, and 1988. I think that we can agree that  at this point nobody needs concern himself with any state that Trump won or lost by 10% or more or in which he got  less than 45.5% of the vote (you will see what state that means.

States that I deem potentially in play at this stage based upon 2016 results are in colors other than gray. Here we go:

Utah 2016, Trump getting much less than a majority of the vote (45.05%)
Trump won by 8.0 to 9.99%
Trump won by 4.0 to 7.99%
Trump won by 1.0 to 3.99%
(white) Trump won by less than 1%
Clinton won by less than 4%
Clinton won by 4.0 to 7.99%
Clinton won by 8.0 to 9.99%

I have Florida in a really pale shade of blue because Trump won the state by 1.22% and New Hampshire in a really-pale shade of pink because Clinton won it by less than 1%.

I don't have a split of Maine by popular vote in the two Congressional districts, but I would guess that ME-01 is very solidly Democratic, and that ME-02 went to Trump in the same range as did Georgia. That's conservative on my part. But with that I get to add NE-02 for political symmetry, and I am guessing that Trump won it by slightly less than 10% and that Clinton won ME-01 by a similar margin.

Why do I show Utah? All that it would take for Trump to lose Utah would be for a Third Party or independent candidate  to get Democrats to decide to not waste their vote on the Democratic nominee for President and vote instead for some conservative who better fits LDS  (Mormon) values  than does Donald Trump.

4% is the usual margin of error. In that range anyone who makes any prediction of absolute certainty is a fool and the only definitive result is the election itself. This is with the dynamics of 2016 which I must consider relevant.  But this is assuming that results of 2016 have relevance in 2020. In the last three presidential elections involving an incumbent President, the statewide maps of the election changed little from the election that put the incumbent in and the one in which the incumbent sought re-election. That in mind, electoral history of the states is relevant.

Going back to 1992, as there are seven Presidential elections bearing some possible relevance to this one (and anything before that is either the GOP landslides of 1980, 1984, and 1988 which will not be approached and elections from 1976 or earlier when the Democratic party was stronger in the Middle and Deep South and the Democrats usually lost states outside the South except for a few scattered from Minnesota to Massachusetts)

Democratic seven times
Democratic six times
Democratic five times
Democratic four times (white)
Democratic three times
Democratic once
Republican seven times

No state has voted for the Democratic nominee in exactly two elections on this map.

I know, of course, that this history is relatively crude. It will be relevant, demographics notwithstanding, that the Democrats have a very weak  position for winning any statewide election in Arizona or Georgia (one-time Bill Clinton wins, and close to somewhat close in 2016), let alone Texas. Utah is obviously a pipe dream for any Democrat or independent under all but the most extreme circumstances. Trump getting so close in Minnesota is itself a shocker, but I see plenty of ways for Minnesota to be a very bad state for Trump in 2020 and copious evidence in polling data that he will fare badly there. That Democrats usually win Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin indicates that Donald Trump must achieve his promises without offending too many sensibilities to win those states. Likewise, that Bill Clinton lost Colorado and Florida once in the 1990s may not be particularly relevant. In view of the 2016 election it is absurd that Colorado and Ohio should be in the same category, but they are on this map of electoral history. The same applies to Florida and Virginia.






  

    

[pbrower2a]

(continued)

So how can I combine relevant  issues such as the way the state voted in 2016 (which must matter greatly in an objective projection of the 2020 election) and the last seven elections?

Assign one point for the number of times in which a Democratic nominee won the state and one point for belonging in a category most unfavorable to Trump  (7 for Hillary Clinton winning by 8% or more, 6 for her winning by 4% to 7.9%, 5 for her winning by less than 4%, 4 for a loss by her under 1%,  5 for a loss between 1% and 1.99%, 6 for a loss of 2 to 5.99%, and 7 for a loss of 6% or more.  I am arbitrarily assigning a value of '4' to Utah because Trump got a smaller share of the total vote in Utah than he got in Michigan.

This is a probabilistic construction based upon the direction and margin of the vote in 2016 and the electoral history of the states beginning in 1992:

0 points [/color] (Texas)
2 to 4
5 to 7
8
9 to 11
12 or 13 (Maine, New Mexico, ME-01)

Before someone says that Iowa is lost to the Democrats, one must remember why the state voted in five of the last seven Presidential elections for a Democratic nominee. With Ohio, one must ask why the Democrats won four of the last seven such contests. On the other side, one must ask anyone who thinks that either Arizona, Georgia, or North Carolina will go for just about any Democrat due to demographics or some other state trend why those states voted in six of the last seven times for Republican nominees for President.  One can of course distinguish Florida and Virginia... and Colorado and Ohio.  

Circumstances and candidates will matter.

I am not filling in the other states because I have no reason to believe that they would vote differently from how they voted in 2016, barring a landslide win by either side.

[GeorgiaModerate]

Gallup, 12/2

Approve 34 (+1)
Disapprove 61 (-1)

[Crumpets]

Gallup, 12/2

Approve 34 (+1)
Disapprove 61 (-1)

Wow, the Flynn plea actually helped Trump?

/typical Atlas overreaction

[Holmes]

Gallup, 12/2

Approve 34 (+1)
Disapprove 61 (-1)

Wow, the Flynn plea actually helped Trump?

/typical Atlas overreaction

Well Mueller finally got his man and it wasn't Trump.

[Crumpets]

Gallup, 12/2

Approve 34 (+1)
Disapprove 61 (-1)

Wow, the Flynn plea actually helped Trump?

/typical Atlas overreaction

Well Mueller finally got his man and it wasn't Trump.

Yeah, and I mean the charge was only for lying to the FBI - nothing near as bad as what Democrats were saying!

[GeorgiaModerate]

Gallup, 12/3

Approve 35 (+1)
Disapprove 60 (-1)

[Dr Oz Lost Party!]

Gallup, 12/3

Approve 35 (+1)
Disapprove 60 (-1)

What can we say, Republican voters obviously love it when a pervert endorses a pedophile. Riles up the base.

We don't know if this is trend yet.

[Person Man]

Gallup, 12/3

Approve 35 (+1)
Disapprove 60 (-1)

What can we say, Republican voters obviously love it when a pervert endorses a pedophile. Riles up the base.

We don't know if this is trend yet.

If he does improve, it definitely means a lot of people are just egging Him on for entertainment.

[GeorgiaModerate]

Gallup, 12/4

Approve 35 (nc)
Disapprove 60 (nc)

[Landslide Lyndon]

Gallup, 12/4

Approve 35 (nc)
Disapprove 60 (nc)

So I guess his latest dip wasn't some bad daily sample.

[American2020]

Quinnipac, (NOV. 29-DEC. 4), 1,508 Registered Voters

Approve: 35%
Disapprove: 58%
DK/NA: 7%

https://poll.qu.edu/images/polling/us/us12052017_ufrt567.pdf/

I consider now any polls including Registered Voters. Quinnipac is one of my favorite pollsters.

Among Millennials

Approve: 19%
Disapprove: 74%
DK/NA: 7%

[Dr Oz Lost Party!]

Oh sh**t

[junior chįmp]

Among Millennials

Approve: 19%
Disapprove: 74%
DK/NA: 7%

The GOP is finished

[Dr. Arch]

Among Millennials

Approve: 19%
Disapprove: 74%
DK/NA: 7%

The GOP is finished

Keep pissing us off Republicans. We'll pay it back in dividends and with interest.

[Brittain33]

Among Millennials

Approve: 19%
Disapprove: 74%
DK/NA: 7%

The GOP is finished

Conference committee announces excise tax on avocado toast

[pbrower2a]

Among Millennials

Approve: 19%
Disapprove: 74%
DK/NA: 7%

Wow! For Republicans this is almost as bad as a 'minority' vote. If it is well motivated to vote it is going to bring about Democratic wins in places in which such wins look unlikely. 

The GOP is finished

Conference committee announces excise tax on avocado toast

Wow! For Republicans this is almost as bad as a 'minority' vote. If it is well motivated to vote it is going to bring about Democratic wins in places in which such wins look unlikely. 

[Inmate Trump]

Among Millennials

Approve: 19%
Disapprove: 74%
DK/NA: 7%

Wow! For Republicans this is almost as bad as a 'minority' vote. If it is well motivated to vote it is going to bring about Democratic wins in places in which such wins look unlikely. 

The GOP is finished

Conference committee announces excise tax on avocado toast

Wow! For Republicans this is almost as bad as a 'minority' vote. If it is well motivated to vote it is going to bring about Democratic wins in places in which such wins look unlikely. 

Yep, all of this.  But the GOP will just get Putin to help them out again...

[Reaganfan]

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/trumps-approval-rating-jumps-to-45-percent-highest-since-september/article/2642685

[pbrower2a]

Extreme outlier.

[BudgieForce]

Morning Consult usually gives Trump good rating. I think their last poll was -9. Don't read too much into it.