Trump approval ratings thread 1.2

[pbrower2a]

Great numbers coming for Trump in this poll, per Holmes.

https://twitter.com/foxnewspoll/status/956272900557934592

I don't get it. For all the faults that FoX Propaganda Channel has as a news source, it uses objective polls that do not distort the polling results. Analysts at the journalistic cesspool might spin the results to serve an agenda, but that is a different matter. 

[pbrower2a]

Texas, PPP

Approve: 45
Disapprove: 48

An absolute must-win for any Republican nominee. This state hasn't gone for a Democratic nominee since Carter in 1976. If the Democratic nominee should win Texas, then he or she is at at least 400 electoral votes.


http://endcitizensunited.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/TexasResults.pdf …

Sorry, I cannot use it. First, it is a favorability poll, and I am not using those anymore. Second, it is for an advocacy group. It would be nice to see a poll from Texas Tribune again.

...But I can use this one:

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Oklahoma is likely to be the President's best state in 2020 should he run for re-election. But it is still 8% down in my projection from the usual 70-30 win for a Republican nominee.


Color and intensity will indicate the variance from a tie (ties will be in white) with  in a 50-50 election with blue for an R lean and red for a D lean. Numbers will be shown except in individual districts

int      var
2        1-4%
3        5-8%
5        9-12%
7        13-19%
9        20% or more

DC -- way out of reach for any Republican.

ME-01 D+8
ME-02 R+2

NE-01 R+11
NE-02 R+4
NE-03 R+27

(data from Wikipedia, map mine)
 I use 100-DIS as a reasonable ceiling for the Trump vote in 2020. Thus:

Lightest shades are for a raw total of votes that allows for a win with a margin of 5% or less; middle shades are for totals with allow for wins with 6 to 10% margins; deepest shades are for vote percentages that allow wins of 10% or more. Numbers are for the projected vote for Trump.

Note -- if Trump is underwater in the polling, then the results come out in pink.    

100-DIS gives a reasonable ceiling for Trump in 2020 -- at least the most suitable one that I can think of. An assumption of a close race for President depends upon most states being close to their Cook PVI ratings. So how is that going?

Use green for a poll that diverges in favor of Trump's likely opponent, and orange for polls that  that diverge to the favor of Trump. Use light shades for divergence of 4% or less, medium for 5% to 8%, and dark shades for 9% or more.  For example, I show a ceiling of 48% for Trump in Alabama in a state that usually gives the average Republican a 14% edge in a 50-50 election. Trump would be reasonably expected to win Alabama by about 14% in a normal election, but my estimate (100-DIS)  suggests that Trump would fare worse by about 12% for the average Republican in a 50-50 election nationwide.  
 
  

Twenty-four states with recent polls... now nearly half (48%) of all states, If you can see a 50-50 election for the Presidency in 2020, then you see something that I don't see.

The 2020  election will not be a 50-50 contest or even close. Even the historically 'average' opponent will defeat President Trump decisively.

Of course I would love to see polls of Arizona, Florida*, Georgia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania... and maybe Texas. Trump stands to lose states that Republicans simply do not lose in Presidential elections. Note that 100-DIS is an estimate of the ceiling for the President in a re-election bid...

it is tough to win a state in which one's disapproval rating is above 50%, although Obama did come back from a poll of 43-51 in 2010 in Ohio, only to subsequently win the state. But Obama is one of the slickest campaigners in American history. Trump is not Obama, which is a severe understatement.  

*A Florida poll from October was awful for Trump.

[pbrower2a]

Quinnipiac:

Approve 36% (-2)
Disapprove 58% (+1)

Source

Trump's numbers have been pretty sable since about the end of August with Q.

If this poll represents reality and the national trend that I see in my approval map, then I can imagine President Trump losing the popular vote at least 45-55 with much less interstate polarization.

[pbrower2a]

OHIO 43/52

http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2018/01/poll_shows_richard_cordray_nar.html

The poll was commissioned by the 1984 Society, a nonprofit, bipartisan group of former Ohio Senate employees and senators who wanted good independent polling for the political community. It was conducted via phone interviews by Fallon Research with a sample size of 801 and a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.

.....


 

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Ohio has offered no poll since the 2016 election, and it is the bellwether state. It looks as if it will go against Donald Trump in 2020.  Note that my estimate for Trump is a ceiling based solely upon disapproval, which is a conservative estimate. 

Color and intensity will indicate the variance from a tie (ties will be in white) with  in a 50-50 election with blue for an R lean and red for a D lean. Numbers will be shown except in individual districts

int      var
2        1-4%
3        5-8%
5        9-12%
7        13-19%
9        20% or more

DC -- way out of reach for any Republican.

ME-01 D+8
ME-02 R+2

NE-01 R+11
NE-02 R+4
NE-03 R+27

(data from Wikipedia, map mine)
 I use 100-DIS as a reasonable ceiling for the Trump vote in 2020. Thus:

Lightest shades are for a raw total of votes that allows for a win with a margin of 5% or less; middle shades are for totals with allow for wins with 6 to 10% margins; deepest shades are for vote percentages that allow wins of 10% or more. Numbers are for the projected vote for Trump.

Note -- if Trump is underwater in the polling, then the results come out in pink.    

100-DIS gives a reasonable ceiling for Trump in 2020 -- at least the most suitable one that I can think of. An assumption of a close race for President depends upon most states being close to their Cook PVI ratings. So how is that going?

Use green for a poll that diverges in favor of Trump's likely opponent, and orange for polls that  that diverge to the favor of Trump. Use light shades for divergence of 4% or less, medium for 5% to 8%, and dark shades for 9% or more.  For example, I show a ceiling of 48% for Trump in Alabama in a state that usually gives the average Republican a 14% edge in a 50-50 election. Trump would be reasonably expected to win Alabama by about 14% in a normal election, but my estimate (100-DIS)  suggests that Trump would fare worse by about 12% for the average Republican in a 50-50 election nationwide.  
 
  

Fully half (25) states now show recent polls...  If you can see a 50-50 election for the Presidency in 2020, then you see something that I don't see. Wishful thinking and two dollars + tax will get you a two-dollar cup of coffee. Two dollars + tax will get you the same cup of coffee even without wishful thinking.

The 2020  election will not be a 50-50 contest or even close. Even the historically 'average' opponent will defeat President Trump decisively.

Of course I would love to see polls of Arizona, Florida*, Georgia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania... and maybe Texas. Trump stands to lose states that Republicans simply do not lose in Presidential elections. Note that 100-DIS is an estimate of the ceiling for the President in a re-election bid...

it is tough to win a state in which one's disapproval rating is above 50%.

*A Florida poll from October was awful for Trump.

[pbrower2a]

SurveyMonkey weekly tracker, Jan 18-24, 14166 adults

Approve 40 (-2)
Disapprove 58 (+2)

Strongly approve 23 (-1)
Strongly disapprove 47 (+2)

Glorious Shutdown Surge. These numbers are terrible for Dems.

Too small for deriving any conclusions, as the differences are within the margin of error.

What is telling is the statewide polls. Most of the President's loss in support so far as I see is from where Republicans had a large cushion in 2016, and really since 2008. But -- he's running out of cushion in such places.

President Trump shows an apparent gain against Cook PVI in only one state in which it can matter -- but that, I am told, results from polls that some posters deprecate.

As I see things, I can project expectations of the 2020 election based upon either

(1) recent polls
(2) patterns from latter-middle 2017, and (now for rather few states)
(3) analogies in similar states
(4) electoral behavior in 2008, 2012, or 2016.

I'm going with polls from earlier in the year for Arizona, Florida, and Texas here. I did reject a favorability poll for Texas from a liberal advocacy group, but this is similar to some earlier polls of Texas. I am going to cut back what looks like an event-influenced poll in Georgia (calling African countries a vile word from which some ugly implications arise about black people -- every white Georgian knows some good black people). This may fade some, but I don't see it disappearing completely. You do not compare whole ethnic groups to feces.

In this map red is for likely D wins, blue is for likely R wins, and white is for statistical ties  for states for which I have polling data. Dark shades are for wins of 10% or more, medium shades are for wins of 5% to 9%, and pale shades are for margins of 1% to 4%. I am using criteria (1) and (2) alone here.

If President Trump has a disapproval rating of 50% or higher now in any state, then he has at least a 95% chance of losing that state in a binary election. Trump is underwater enough in Minnesota that I see no way in which he can win it.

So0me states are really easy to fill in. 

OK. We can be very certain about such states as Idaho and Wyoming going R... and NE-03 even if we have no polling data at all. On the other side, there is no reason to believe that any of Connecticut, Delaware, Dee Cee, Hawaii, Illinois, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, or Washington will be anything but deep Atlas Red. But I have some question about Utah. Utah Democrats might decide not to waste a vote on the Democratic nominee for President if they can throw the electoral votes of Utah to some dissident conservative running against Donald Trump who has the endorsement of the LDS Church. I'm putting Utah in dark green for that reason. Trump got only 45% or so of the total vote in Utah in 2016, and his personal life is decidedly un-Mormon.

Orange and green indicate some potential for controversy.  Least controversial here will be that Maine (which is a lot like New Hampshire), Nevada, and New Mexico will go D by high single digits. Those states will be in orange, with ME-02 in pale orange because it did go to President Trump in 2016. In view of the recent poll of Ohio, I must put Pennsylvania in a middle shade of orange. 

At this point I can be a bit more daring about the remaining eight states and two remaining Congressional districts of Nebraska. I will give a middle-green shade to Alaska, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota, and to NE-01. I'm not saying that these states will be in play, but I think the usual margins for Republican nominees will be pared this time. I have no idea of how much. I will be charitable with Republicans on Indiana, South Carolina, and NE-02 for now... pale green... until I see something to the contrary.   

I expect green shades to go to blue and orange shades to go to red on subsequent projections.  That's not to say that I have no doubts. Trump support so far as I have sen is declining most in the states that he won by the largest margins, and I expect that to hold true in the Plains states usually solid R.   

[pbrower2a]

A story from the Salt Lake City Tribune in discussing a US House race shows that the approval of Donald Trump statewide in Utah  is at 48% (Dan Jones Polling). Nothing is said of the disapproval rating.

[pbrower2a]

Trump's approval in Colorado is at an awful 35/63.

https://www.colorado.edu/lab/aprl/sites/default/files/attached-files/2017_colorado_political_climate_report.pdf

With the caveat that this polling is from November -- it suggests that Republicans are in big trouble in Colorado, which is becoming much like California in its voting patterns. I would guess that this poll can allow inferences about states with some similarities of demographics and political history. The detail is strong, and it has its data from what looks like well-drafted planning and implementation. If it isn;t a newer poll of Colorado, then it is probably better than the poll that I now have.

Senator Gardner (a Republican elected in the 2014 wave) looks doomed to defeat in 2020. He gets but 24% approval and 48% disapproval, which makes him less vulnerable than President Trump -- but not by much. Allowing a ceiling of 52% in case he turns practically everyone undecided into a voter for him is an extreme stretch.

Color and intensity will indicate the variance from a tie (ties will be in white) with  in a 50-50 election with blue for an R lean and red for a D lean. Numbers will be shown except in individual districts

int      var
2        1-4%
3        5-8%
5        9-12%
7        13-19%
9        20% or more

DC -- way out of reach for any Republican.

ME-01 D+8
ME-02 R+2

NE-01 R+11
NE-02 R+4
NE-03 R+27

(data from Wikipedia, map mine)
 I use 100-DIS as a reasonable ceiling for the Trump vote in 2020. Thus:

Lightest shades are for a raw total of votes that allows for a win with a margin of 5% or less; middle shades are for totals with allow for wins with 6 to 10% margins; deepest shades are for vote percentages that allow wins of 10% or more. Numbers are for the projected vote for Trump.

Note -- if Trump is underwater in the polling, then the results come out in pink.    

100-DIS gives a reasonable ceiling for Trump in 2020 -- at least the most suitable one that I can think of. An assumption of a close race for President depends upon most states being close to their Cook PVI ratings. So how is that going?

Use green for a poll that diverges in favor of Trump's likely opponent, and orange for polls that  that diverge to the favor of Trump. Use light shades for divergence of 4% or less, medium for 5% to 8%, and dark shades for 9% or more.  For example, I show a ceiling of 48% for Trump in Alabama in a state that usually gives the average Republican a 14% edge in a 50-50 election. Trump would be reasonably expected to win Alabama by about 14% in a normal election, but my estimate (100-DIS)  suggests that Trump would fare worse by about 12% for the average Republican in a 50-50 election nationwide.  
 
  

Fully half (25) of all states now show recent polls...  If you can see a 50-50 election for the Presidency in 2020, then you see something that I don't see. Wishful thinking and two dollars + tax will get you a two-dollar cup of coffee. Two dollars + tax will get you the same cup of coffee even without wishful thinking.

The 2020  election will not be a 50-50 contest or even close. Even the historically 'average' opponent will defeat President Trump decisively.

Of course I would love to see polls of Arizona, Florida*, Georgia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania... and maybe Texas. Trump stands to lose states that Republicans simply do not lose in Presidential elections. Note that 100-DIS is an estimate of the ceiling for the President in a re-election bid...

it is tough to win a state in which one's disapproval rating is above 50%.

*A Florida poll from October was awful for Trump.

[/quote]

[pbrower2a]

I would guess that, for all of Trump's buffoonery, he will get a boost in Utah for the forseeable future because most Utahns support his effort to strip National Monument status from Bear's Ears.

Who in Utah of all places would support this???

Utah is a state with a large rural population, extreme distrust of federal government dating back to the state's founding (where they saw the federal government as persecuting their religion), and plenty of resource extraction (mining, logging, and cattle ranching). The only people who would support national monument status there are Native Americans, transplants in Park City, and latte-drinking Patagonia wearers in Salt Lake City. The rest of the state is basically the Bundy family (and Provo)

edit: I'll add that Herbert (a very popular governor) was also very actively anti-monument

To the contrary about Utah having a very rural population -- the vast majority  of Utahns live in a narrow urban corridor along Interstate 15 with a spur to Logan. The rural areas include much thinly-populated desert, semidesert, and mountains. Contrasting Utah to perhaps Ohio -- Ohio has its share of large cities, but what isn't urban is rural. Ohio is dotted with small towns outside of Greater Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Dayton, Toledo, Akron, and Canton. Utah does not have oodles of small towns scattered all over the state. Utah may have no giant cities, but Logan, Ogden, Salt Lake City, Provo, and St. George are urban. The urban population includes suburbs, as well. Utah is more urban than such states as Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and even California. Yes, California has its giant cities, but it also has some densely-populated rural areas in the Central Valley.  

Utah is not conservative and Republican because it is rural. Utah is conservative and Republican because Dwight Eisenhower successfully pulled the LDS Church into the Republican Party, and this has stuck.

[pbrower2a]

Its funny how Trumps approval rating in Alaska, which is supposed to be the next big swing state is the same in Arkansas a state that is supposed to be completely safe republican.

Its Especially funny, considering Trump won Alaska by a margin of 15 Points but won Arkansas by a margin of 27 points.

The average polling from Gallup is from July, so it is already six months old. It could be that President Trump so kisses up to the gravy train of fossil-fuels extraction that he does particularly well in states such as Alaska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Wyoming in which fossil fuel  extraction dominates the state's economy. But contrast Kansas and Nebraska, which are much like the two Dakotas except for slight extraction of fossil fuels. Trump likely wins Kansas and Nebraska, but by the narrowest margins in the state's history since 1964.

I see Donald Trump becoming a big disappointment in some states that he won big. President Trump has seen his support crater in the Mountain South and the Deep South. I live in neither,  but I am guessing that he is proving a bad cultural match to both  parts of the South, or perhaps that a populist trend characteristic  of that in which Jimmy Carter won every former Confederate state except Virginia. I'm guessing that Virginia is anti-populist in its heritage. Virginia rejected   Trump in 2016, ironically also being the only former Confederate state to reject him.

http://www.270towin.com/maps/BR8nb

50% plus - safe R
49%-45% - likely R
44%-43% - lean R
42%-39% - lean D
38%-33% - likely D (probably should just be safe D but its purdier this way)
% - safe D

Looks like there could be a realignment going on in the Midwest and Southwest.

Wishful thinking for a Republican.  The high disapproval numbers look like sure things for a Democrat with no strong challenge on the Left as a Third Party. I see President Trump more vulnerable to a Third Party challenge on the Right in 2020.

Why do people keep putting their hands in the sand about Georgia? Hillary did far far worse with black people than Obama yet she still improved on Obama's margin by 2% there. Clearly things are changing there fast. She won 18-24 year olds by over 35 pts there for fs sakes.

It's also been trending blue since 2004...

See also Arizona and Texas.

Well-educated white suburbanite voted for Obama except in Arizona, Georgia, and Texas. Th9ose exceptions could vanish in 2020.

By the way  -- Texas used to be infamous for pretentious ignoramuses, loud-mouths who would have been wiser to keep their mouths closed just to protect their images. That is over. Texas has  its share of well-educated white people, and they may be rejecting Trump.




  











-    

[pbrower2a]

Gallup poll to be entered  after I first show the Cook PVI ratings, which predicts reasonably well how the states would go if  one assumes two things: that states will vote on average in the next election as they did in the last two on average against the assumption  of a 50-50 election. This model does not change between Presidential elections.

Color and intensity will indicate the variance from a tie (ties will be in white) with  in a 50-50 election with blue for an R lean and red for a D lean. Numbers will be shown except in individual districts

int      var
2        1-4%
3        5-8%
5        9-12%
7        13-19%
9        20% or more

DC -- way out of reach for any Republican.

ME-01 D+8
ME-02 R+2

NE-01 R+11
NE-02 R+4
NE-03 R+27

(data from Wikipedia, map mine)

Here  is the Gallup data for 2017. Figuring that this is an average from early February to late December, I will have to assume an average date of July 15 or so for the polling data. This is now rather old data, and in some cases obsolete. For example, I see Trump support cratering in the Mountain and Deep South. the Mountain South and Deep South are going back to a populist phase (the South has typically oscillated between the  two) or whether The Donald is beginning to appear as a bad match for either part of the South.  This data (or later polling) is not  intended to show anything other than how support appears at some time or at an average of times. As a general rule, new polling supplants even better old  polling.

So here  is the Gallup polling with a number  of 100-DIS reflecting what I consider the ceiling for Donald Trump. This is lenient to the extent that I assume that he can pick up most undecided voters but recognizes that undoing disapproval at any stage requires miracles. By definition, miracles are unpredictable.

 Gallup data from all polls in 2017 (average assumed  in mid-July):

*Approval lower than disapproval in this state

for barely-legible numbers for DC and some states -- CT 37 DC 11 DE 42 HI 40 MD 35 RI 38

Lightest shades are for a raw total of votes that allows for a win with a margin of 5% or less; middle shades are for totals with allow for wins with 6 to 10% margins; deepest shades are for vote percentages that allow wins of 10% or more. Numbers are for the projected vote for Trump.

This is polling from October or later, and I will be adding a poll of Florida from October because it is newer than the Gallup polling data.

 I use 100-DIS as a reasonable ceiling for the Trump vote in 2020. Thus:

Lightest shades are for a raw total of votes that allows for a win with a margin of 5% or less; middle shades are for totals with allow for wins with 6 to 10% margins; deepest shades are for vote percentages that allow wins of 10% or more. Numbers are for the projected vote for Trump.

Note -- if Trump is underwater in the polling, then the results come out in pink.    

[pbrower2a]

Holy heck.

Ipsos 1/25-29

Approve: 40 (+3)
Disapprove: 55 (-4)

Very worrying sign.

Still within the margin of error. Nothing to get concerned or excited about, either way.

The State of the Union speech, the political equivalent of the Super Bowl among Presidential communications,is tonight, and the President has the opportunity to recover some of his lost credibility or make an even bigger fool of himself. This is his best opportunity because even people who hate his guts will be giving him a chance that they would never otherwise give him.

I can say this: I think he has little to lose and much to gain. Empty platitudes would be improvements over his usual expressions. He gets to announce his infrastructure program without showing its faults (privatization to his cronies, monopolization by his cronies, and corruption on behalf of his cronies which I expect in anything involving this President). He can propose huge tax breaks for companies that choose to retrofit their power sources to belch beautiful black smoke from coal-fired furnaces in an effort to be a friend of coal miners.

As for infrastructure -- he can promise gleaming new highways full of gas-guzzling vehicles (he might even promote a 'cash-for-clunkers' program that gives people driving unpatriotic small cars that sip gasoline incentives to buy vehicles that wolf down gasoline) and of course remove lots of solar panels and wind turbines  in favor of greater consumption of fossil fuels. He will tell people in places with real winters that they need not worry about Florida being inundated; Floridians will be coming up to Michigan and Wisconsin to bid up real estate prices. He will tell us about all the jobs involved in collecting tolls on what have been free routes since the 1950s. Maybe he will tell us of the educational advantages that Americans will get from learning Russian as a desirable supplement to their learning.

But at this I am treating President Trump as Voltaire's strawman character Doctor Pangloss from Candide, and as you can obviously tell, I fall far short of the literary merit of Voltaire. At that, Donald Trump isn't as smart or witty, either, as Voltaire's strawman.

OK, I would not want any business dealings with Donald Trump, and I trust him in politics even less. .          

[pbrower2a]

OK -- now for the tricky merger of old and new material.

Here  is the Gallup data for 2017. Figuring that this is an average from early February to late December, I will have to assume an average date of July 15 or so for the polling data. This is now rather old data, and in some cases obsolete. For example, I see Trump support cratering in the Mountain and Deep South. the Mountain South and Deep South are going back to a populist phase (the South has typically oscillated between the  two) or whether The Donald is beginning to appear as a bad match for either part of the South.  This data (or later polling) is not  intended to show anything other than how support appears at some time or at an average of times. As a general rule, new polling supplants even better old  polling.

So here  is the Gallup polling with a number  of 100-DIS reflecting what I consider the ceiling for Donald Trump. This is lenient to the extent that I assume that he can pick up most undecided voters but recognizes that undoing disapproval at any stage requires miracles. By definition, miracles are unpredictable.

 Gallup data from all polls in 2017 (average assumed  in mid-July):

*Approval lower than disapproval in this state

for barely-legible numbers for DC and some states -- CT 37 DC 11 DE 42 HI 40 MD 35 RI 38

Lightest shades are for a raw total of votes that allows for a win with a margin of 5% or less; middle shades are for totals with allow for wins with 6 to 10% margins; deepest shades are for vote percentages that allow wins of 10% or more. Numbers are for the projected vote for Trump.

This is polling from October or later, and I will be adding a poll of Florida from October because it is newer than the Gallup polling data.

Now for the attempt to merge the map of Gallup polling data and the latest polls (October to now). With few exceptions I am looking at Florida and Georgia because I can hardly believe that Trump could lose those states 59-41 and Minnesota because the poll in question has a huge number of undecided voters. For those states I am going with the Gallup data. For other states that have recent polls I am going with the most recent poll, November or later. With this measure I am giving Trump a little slack. on the net.  The states to fill in? Gallup data.  

 I use 100-DIS as a reasonable ceiling for the Trump vote in 2020. Thus:

for barely-legible numbers for DC and some states -- CT 37 DC 11 DE 42 HI 40 MD 35 RI 38

Lightest shades are for a raw total of votes that allows for a win with a margin of 5% or less; middle shades are for totals with allow for wins with 6 to 10% margins; deepest shades are for vote percentages that allow wins of 10% or more. Numbers are for the projected vote for Trump.

[pbrower2a]

Democratic revival in Kansas anyone?

Possible.  Kansas has become contested in recent gubernatorial and senatorial elections. The Hard Right has taken over the GOP, which used to be fairly moderate... and if the GOP moderates either drift into the Kansas Democratic Party or take it over, then the current leadership of the Kansas GOP is in deep trouble.

But let's remember: Kansas has not voted for a Democratic nominee for President since 1964 . Well, much the same was said of Virginia in 2008.

The '53' (ehich reflects 47% disapproval) is a putrid performance for a Republican President in Kansas, and that is an average of Gallup polling throughout 2017. That data suggests an average age from July. In view of the overall collapse of Republican  support since July, reality for the Kansas GOP could be even worse now. Could be, that is. I do not predict polling results. The only analogues in recent polling  that I have for Kansas are Iowa, and Oklahoma, and both analogues are flawed. Much of Kansas agriculture is ranching, and Iowa is not at all a ranching state. Kansas is undeniably and almost wholly Midwestern, and Oklahoma straddles the Midwest and the Mountain South.  As such Kansas cannot quite have the political culture of either Iowa or Oklahoma. Give me Nebraska and I have a good analogue for Kansas. 

[pbrower2a]

This is the Cook PVI applying to all 50 states, DC, and the Congressional districts of Maine and Nebraska. Ordinarily  one expects that Congressional districts go  for the Presidency as they do for Congressional Representatives.

Color and intensity will indicate the variance from a tie (ties will be in white) with  in a 50-50 election with blue for an R lean and red for a D lean. Numbers will be shown except in individual districts

int      var
2        1-4%
3        5-8%
5        9-12%
7        13-19%
9        20% or more

DC -- way out of reach for any Republican.

ME-01 D+8
ME-02 R+2

NE-01 R+11
NE-02 R+4
NE-03 R+27

(data from Wikipedia, map mine)

 I use 100-DIS as a reasonable ceiling for the Trump vote in 2020.


100-DIS gives a reasonable ceiling for Trump in 2020 -- at least the most suitable one that I can think of. An assumption of a close race for President depends upon most states being close to their Cook PVI ratings. So how is that going?

Use green for a poll that diverges in favor of Trump's likely opponent, and orange for polls that  that diverge to the favor of Trump. Use light shades for divergence of 4% or less, medium for 5% to 8%, and dark shades for 9% or more.  For example, I show a ceiling of 48% for Trump in Alabama in a state that usually gives the average Republican a 14% edge in a 50-50 election. Trump would be reasonably expected to win Alabama by about 14% in a normal election, but my estimate (100-DIS)  suggests that Trump would fare worse by about 12% for the average Republican in a 50-50 election nationwide.  
 
  

Just more than half (26) of all states now show polls from October or later... this is what I show as divergence from an assumption that the 2020  Presidential race will be even. So far the biggest hemorrhage of support for Trump has been in some states in the Mountain and Deep South that he won by gigantic margins. More critical has been his evident loss of support in such states as Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, and Wisconsin, according to polling data from October or later. I have no recent polls for Arizona or Pennsylvania, either of which would still be highly desirable.

Cook PVI values for Kansas and Nebraska (based upon 2012 and 2016 elections) suggest that I should have '63' and '64' for those two states, respectively. Even from July I would have to show a divergence of low teens away, and to the Democratic trend, for those two states.

The Gallup data averages from July in age., I would not be surprised if Kansas and Nebraska are breaking even worse than the Gallup average over 2017 did. I cannot say that yet. It is not as if I can say that if Trump is doing badly  in Ohio, then he is also doing badly in Pennsylvania. I can say that Trump would lose NE-02 and  possibly NE-01, whose electoral votes matter.

The horrid results for Trump in the Mountain and Deep South may reflect that he has suddenly been exposed as a horrible match for the culture of both regions. I can easily imagine Southerners thinking of him as an obnoxious d@mnyankee much in contrast to, for example, Ronald Reagan whom the South adored in 1984 or even Barack Obama (who had a more obvious reason for not winning over hearts and minds in the Mountain and Deep South even if he was no more full of himself than Ronald Reagan).

If one is to win votes in one of the national cultures without having an affinity to that culture, then one had better not be seen as full of oneself. I have found that the more that people get to know Donald Trump the less they like him.  In either the Mountain or Deep South a Yankee becomes a d@mnyankee if he is full of himself even if he fits some of the local values initially.

Can I say that the President has proved himself out of touch with mass sentiments in either Kansas or Nebraska? I do not have adequate polling for that.

[pbrower2a]

Cook PVI ratings:

Color and intensity will indicate the variance from a tie (ties will be in white) with  in a 50-50 election with blue for an R lean and red for a D lean. Numbers will be shown except in individual districts

int      var
2        1-4%
3        5-8%
5        9-12%
7        13-19%
9        20% or more

DC -- way out of reach for any Republican.

ME-01 D+8
ME-02 R+2

NE-01 R+11
NE-02 R+4
NE-03 R+27

(data from Wikipedia, map mine)

Here  is the Gallup data for 2017. Figuring that this is an average from early February to late December, I will have to assume an average date of July 15 or so for the polling data. This is now rather old data, and in some cases obsolete. For example, I see Trump support cratering in the Mountain and Deep South. the Mountain South and Deep South are going back to a populist phase (the South has typically oscillated between the  two) or whether The Donald is beginning to appear as a bad match for either part of the South.  This data (or later polling) is not  intended to show anything other than how support appears at some time or at an average of times. As a general rule, new polling supplants even better old  polling.

So here  is the Gallup polling with a number  of 100-DIS reflecting what I consider the ceiling for Donald Trump. This is lenient to the extent that I assume that he can pick up most undecided voters but recognizes that undoing disapproval at any stage requires miracles. By definition, miracles are unpredictable.

 Gallup data from all polls in 2017 (average assumed  in mid-July):

*Approval lower than disapproval in this state

for barely-legible numbers for DC and some states -- CT 37 DC 11 DE 42 HI 40 MD 35 RI 38

Lightest shades are for a raw total of votes that allows for a win with a margin of 5% or less; middle shades are for totals with allow for wins with 6 to 10% margins; deepest shades are for vote percentages that allow wins of 10% or more. Numbers are for the projected vote for Trump.

This is polling from October or later, and I will be adding a poll of Florida from October because it is newer than the Gallup polling data.

 I use 100-DIS as a reasonable ceiling for the Trump vote in 2020. Thus:

Lightest shades are for a raw total of votes that allows for a win with a margin of 5% or less; middle shades are for totals with allow for wins with 6 to 10% margins; deepest shades are for vote percentages that allow wins of 10% or more. Numbers are for the projected vote for Trump.

Note -- if Trump is underwater in the polling, then the results come out in pink.    

Variation from PVI (polls from October 2017 and later):

[pbrower2a]

Virginia 38/58

http://www.13newsnow.com/news/local/virginia/poll-virginians-disapprove-of-president-trump/512759766

It looks as if Trump support was cratering going into the State of the Union speech. We will see  in a week whether he could pull out some support that he had lost.

[pbrower2a]

He dips and rebounds every other month. At this point, it's noise until proven otherwise.

If the low 40's is a "rebound" that tells you the shape he's in.

It's the disapproval number that  matters more. Almost any pol can turn some doubters into accepters. Disapproval is rejection, and rejection is hard to undo.

[pbrower2a]

Possibly a bounce from the State of the Union speech. The President stuck largely to platitudes and was better at veiling his right-wing agenda. He could of course point to greater enthusiasm by the Master Class in the economy (remember, in Trump's America, you know who matters and you know who doesn't). He was careful to even make a veiled attack on abortion by calling attention to a child adopted instead of aborted... anecdotal stuff, the usual fare of right-wingers about the effects of their ideology upon classes of people usually their victims.

I noticed that of people watching the speech, approval was high -- probably because Democrats were not watching it as readily as they would have watched an Obama speech.

About everyone to the left of the absolute center in American politics has long given up on this President. Watch for statewide polls. Donald Trump is not the Great Communicator that Ronald Reagan was.

Of course, should statewide polls start showing a move toward Trump and the GOP, then we might expect the Democratic edge in Congressional polling to completely disappear and  several incumbent Senate Democrats not only in Indiana, Missouri, Montana, and North Dakota -- but also in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota. You can also expect that Donald Trump will win in a landslide and supermajorities in both Houses of Congress and most state legislatures will be able to turn America into a dominant-party system in which the Republican Party is the defined "leading force" in politics.

If you don't think it possible...the 1936 (Stalin) Constitution of the Soviet Union was to a large part a plagiarism of ours. It simply had a few subtle tweaks.

...and the cops can pull my dead body out of my repossessed house. In that sort of America, the only virtue is wealth and what it can buy, and most people will be consigned to roles as desititute toilers, paid too little but facing monopoly prices, and getting to see even children's educated gutted because there will be a need for children in the mines digging out President Trump's 'beautiful clean coal'.   Government will exist to punish anyone not in groups deemed to be true believers in the Union of Christian and Corporate States.

(I suppose I have the backstory for a dystopian science fiction novel. May this all be wrong!)

[pbrower2a]

Donald Trump is a real-life Berzelius Windrip, the incompetent President who is the puppet of the greediest and cruelest interests in the Sinclair Lewis novel It Can't Happen Here.

[pbrower2a]

https://www.dailykos.com/comments/1736627/69120371#comment_69120371

My expectations: he’ll clear the low bar of giving a competent speech, cable news will swoon, his approvals will have a short bump, commenters here will gnash their teeth and rend their garments about how Democrats have thrown away their chances and a thousand years of darkness are upon us, then a few days later Trump will insult baseball or apple pie or something and everything will go back to “normal”.

True. He is a horrible speaker, so he isn't convincing many people to come to his political side who aren't already there. He will go back to tweeting insults that would make the late Don Rickles blush and offend people anew. By November his Congressional supporters will look like abject flunkies of the sort that one would expect in a Supreme Soviet. His SOTU speech is no masterpiece, but instead a series of platitudes interspersed with right-wing and special-interest appeals thinly veiled.

He did not have to say "beautiful clean coal"; he could have instead said "We need to use more coal to create jobs and prosperity for people left behind by people more concerned about the environment than for miners and mine owners".

Yes, this liberal could have offered a better speech, but it would have sounded much more like Ronald Reagan than by some tinpot dictator. By 2020 I expect the Democrats to have found a liberal version of Ronald Reagan and have solid majorities in both Houses of Congress, with conservatism having to redefine itself as something other than selfish, sadistic greed.   

[pbrower2a]

Possibly a bounce from the State of the Union speech. The President stuck largely to platitudes and was better at veiling his right-wing agenda. He could of course point to greater enthusiasm by the Master Class in the economy (remember, in Trump's America, you know who matters and you know who doesn't). He was careful to even make a veiled attack on abortion by calling attention to a child adopted instead of aborted... anecdotal stuff, the usual fare of right-wingers about the effects of their ideology upon classes of people usually their victims.

I noticed that of people watching the speech, approval was high -- probably because Democrats were not watching it as readily as they would have watched an Obama speech.

About everyone to the left of the absolute center in American politics has long given up on this President. Watch for statewide polls. Donald Trump is not the Great Communicator that Ronald Reagan was.

Of course, should statewide polls start showing a move toward Trump and the GOP, then we might expect the Democratic edge in Congressional polling to completely disappear and  several incumbent Senate Democrats not only in Indiana, Missouri, Montana, and North Dakota -- but also in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota. You can also expect that Donald Trump will win in a landslide and supermajorities in both Houses of Congress and most state legislatures will be able to turn America into a dominant-party system in which the Republican Party is the defined "leading force" in politics.

If you don't think it possible...the 1936 (Stalin) Constitution of the Soviet Union was to a large part a plagiarism of ours. It simply had a few subtle tweaks.

...and the cops can pull my dead body out of my repossessed house. In that sort of America, the only virtue is wealth and what it can buy, and most people will be consigned to roles as desititute toilers, paid too little but facing monopoly prices, and getting to see even children's educated gutted because there will be a need for children in the mines digging out President Trump's 'beautiful clean coal'.   Government will exist to punish anyone not in groups deemed to be true believers in the Union of Christian and Corporate States.

(I suppose I have the backstory for a dystopian science fiction novel. May this all be wrong!)

Have you ever read the Handmaiden's Tale?

I haven't. I just read the synopsis in Wikipedia... horrifying, and I'm a man.

My idea has its differences... and the name of the political order might as well be the "Union of Christian and Corporate States" that among other things

(1) claims to be Christian yet transform Jesus' Gospels into a call for 'voluntary' subordination to the Master Class.  This treatment of the Bible is heretical in the extreme -- Sell everything, and give it all to the rich so that you may deserve to live) . Why does this work? Because people who claim to be Christians often do not read heir Bibles and know what Jesus really says!

(2) holds white-supremacist views (so does The Handmaid's Tale)

(3) glorifies the most rapacious plutocrats -- slumlords, loan-sharks, warmonger arms merchants, and rip-off merchants -- and the executive elite

(4) obliterates small business (think of one of the economic roles of German Jews; many were small-scale entrepreneurs working the interstices of a plutocratic society of giant combines

(5) vilifies anything non-white. This is a white-supremacist culture, Aryan style. One of the characters finds that he is 1/32 black in accordance with a genetic test and loses all of the privileges, including the right to claim a college education.

(6) treats suffering as a virtue and any happiness as sin -- except among the elites who live in ostentatious pleasure and indulgence on the sly.

(7) persecutes anyone who does not follow the new Christian interpretation. Tough luck, Catholics, Mormons, and liberal Christians... or anyone who accepts the original Bible.

( Uses a form of Newspeak, basically transforming words into lies and limiting the range of expression so that people can't think effectively without putting themselves at risk of 'rehabilitation' in a 'charity camp'. 'Rehabilitation' implies being 'improved' into a corpse or being lobotomized.   

The trick is to not make it too much like other known examples of dystopian science fiction such as 1984, V for Vendetta, or of course The Handmaid's Tale.  I'm treating the order as a mirror image of the Soviet Union. 

This regime has war for profit, and that is its downfall. Truth usually prevails in the end.

My solution to the debilitating Newspeak is to replace the language.

[pbrower2a]

For all intents and purposes, is there really a politically significant difference between being in the high 30s and being in the mid 40s?

It means you are still unpopular, just that the margin of your unpopularity is less.

Yes -- if an incumbent has an approval rating in the mid-40s he is within range of winning re-election with a competent campaign and good luck.

Of couse, disapproval matters more because that is nearly impossible to shake off.

[pbrower2a]

He is already challenging the range of unpopularity that one saw with Hoover and Carter as their administrations melted down (if for very different reasons).

[pbrower2a]

BTW, apparently Gallup found Trump still at 33% with Indies - his entire approval recovery is driven by Republicans coming home. Itd explain his disapproval remaining stable, at least

Many Republicans are joining the effort to bail out the leaky vessel. They have something to defend.

[pbrower2a]

BTW, apparently Gallup found Trump still at 33% with Indies - his entire approval recovery is driven by Republicans coming home. Itd explain his disapproval remaining stable, at least

Many Republicans are joining the effort to bail out the leak7y vessel. They have something to defend.

leak7y vessel?

Leaky vessel. Typo.

I could as easily have said "circling the wagons".

Choose your metaphor.