A thought for Sunday: no, Trump approval *still* isn’t imploding. BUT …
A thought for Sunday: no, Trump approval *still* isn’t imploding. BUT …
Democrats continue to delude themselves about Presidential approval polls — with one very big possible exception.
In the first place, can we all agree that Trump has had a particularly nasty last several weeks? Including firing Comey, blabbing secrets to the Russian ambassador, blabbing about our submarines to the Philippines’ now-dictator, compromising the intelligence sources of Israel (and then confirming it!) and later Britain, and reports of multiple occasions with multiple officials in which he blatantly appeared to be attempting to shut down a criminal investigation?
Can you imagine what the public opinion polling would look like after several weeks like that, for virtually any past US President, let alone if the president were Hillary Clinton?
Well, here is what Trump’s looks like as of today:
His approval stands at 41%, right in the middle of where it has been since he assumed office in January.
A variation of the Trump-support-is-imploding mantra showed up later in the week when FiveThirtyEight wrote that “Trump’s Base is Shrinking” based on strong vs. weak approval. Typically this is the graph that was shown:
This was contrasted with the strong vs. weak disapproval graph from the Vox article:
But once again, this looks like Democrat self-delusion. Here’s Rasmussen’s graph of strong approval minus disapproval graph so far for Trump:
The FiveThirtyEight article was published at the passing moment when trong disapproval was slightly more than twice as common as strong approval. Now the level is back to where it has been on average for the last two months.
Here’s the second big problem: the metric, which has only been published since 2008, was far wide of the mark in the 2012 election where, despite a negative number, Obama handily won re-election. (Since both 2008 and 2016 did not involve incumbents, the metric really didn’t apply there at all.):
Democrats really need to disabuse themselves about any notion that Trump’s support is imploding in any meaningful way, at least as to he himself. In presidential elections, even those who somewhat approve or disapprove tend to vote.
BUT
But there is one potential jewel in the detritus of the data: the difference between strong approval and strong disapproval may be a K.I.S.S. way to forecast the midterm Congressional elections.
Why? Because in midterms, only those with strong enough motivations come out to vote — and the strength of their opinions looks like a pretty good proxy for their motivation.
In other words, what this is telling us is that if the midterms were to take place with a net disapproval rating on par with that found by FiveThirtyEight, there would probably be a Democratic wave. So it will be worthwhile to check strong approval vs. disapproval from time to time, to see how well it forecasts the 2018 midterm election results.
Maybe Judicial Watch will get the hushed up Obama/NSA assault on the constitution prosecution by spring 2018.
I doubt the pity partying will motivate like Obama did in 2010.
Which just goes to show you that paying attention to Rep voters in any way, shape or form is a total waste of time.
Ignore them, attack their candidates and cater to the Dem base. Nothing will ever change their attitudes and/or voting habits.
Trump’s support won’t decline until and unless his actions begin to actually hurt his supporters. Health care could do it but that’s a ways off.
Nobody should be surprised at the apparent slight net uptick in his ratings at the end of his foreign policy trip. While most of us who are not his fans can find lots of things to criticize about it, to those who are on the line about whether to like him or not, it was probably a net plus, starting with the fact that he did no embarrassing tweeting during it.
He got lots of good visuals and soundbites that look good to those inclined to support him. There he was lecturing 50 Arab Muslim leaders, telling them what to do, and with them apparently going along with it, even if in fact there is no promise in the actual signed agreement to stop funding Sunni terrorists, and the anti-Iran ranting does not help fight terror. But, look, they had him in a sword dance and holding onto a glowing globe!
Then in Israel, where they are a bit worried about him, but see him looking mostly the other way at what goes on in the West Bank and ranting against Iran, whom they do not like because of Hezbollah, well, OK, he flubbed up on intel briefings and walked away without shaking Bibi’s hand there, but they did not complain and mostly propped him up, and, hey that visual at the Western Wall looks good for all the religious fundamentalists who support him.
Then in Europe, while most of us are largely appalled at his speeches at NATO and the G7, he comes across as defending US interests to those not paying too close attention, bashing the Germans for their trade surpluses and not spending enough on NATO. What is there not to like if you are a borderline Trump supporter, and now Fox News and the radio talk shows have some nice claims and visuals to offset all that unpleasant Russia talk? No wonder he got a small poll bump.