March 6: Trump Job Approval Again Underwater, Where It Belongs
As an inveterate poll-watcher, I have been waiting for the moment when Donald Trump’s job approval numbers went underwater, his accustomed position for nearly all of his presidential career. It arrived around the time he made his speech to Congress, as I noted at New York:
Even as he was delivering the most partisan address to Congress maybe ever, Donald Trump’s public support seemed to be regularly eroding. An updated FiveThirtyEight average of Trump’s approval ratings on March 4 (released just as news broke that ABC was shutting down the revered data site) showed him going underwater for the first time since reoccupying the White House, with 47.6 percent approval and 47.9 percent disapproval. That puts Trump back in the same territory of public opinion he occupied during his first term as president, where (per Gallup) he never achieved more than 50 percent job approval, and averaged a mere 41 percent.
Perhaps Trump will get lucky and conditions in the country will improve enough to validate his agenda, but it’s more likely that the same sour public climate that overwhelmed Joe Biden will now afflict his predecessor and successor.
The Reuters/Ipsos survey that pushed Trump’s numbers into negative territory showed a mood very different from the 47th president’s boasts about a new “golden age” for our country:
“Thirty-four percent of Americans say that the country is headed in the right direction, compared to 49% who say it is off on the wrong track. When it comes to several specific issues, Americans are more likely to say things are off on the wrong track than going in the right direction: cost of living (22% right direction / 60% wrong track), the national economy (31% right direction / 51% wrong track), national politics (33% right direction / 50% wrong track), American foreign policy (33% right direction / 49% wrong track), and employment and jobs (33% right direction / 47% wrong track).”
So all the hype about Trump being a popular president who was in the midst of engineering a major realignment of the American electorate is already looking more than a bit hollow. Trump has a solid Republican base of support and a solid Democratic opposition, with independents currently leaning towards the Democratic Party on most issues. Perhaps Trump’s agenda will gain momentum and support, but since he’s not trying to reach out beyond his party’s base at all, he’s going to need a lift from Americans who only voted for him in 2024 as the lesser of evils and may not vote in the 2026 midterms at all.
At present Trump has lost whatever presidential “honeymoon” he initially enjoyed after his return to the White House, and needs to find new converts to return to genuine popularity. He’s not off to a great start.
OK, Joe, a lead is a lead. Does this mean that you would _not_ be encouraged by a poll showing Bush ahead by 7 in Alabama?
As for the battleground states being different each time, I disagree. They are mostly predictable, with only a few exceptions in each cycle (the difinition is, of course, states where the vote is fairly close to the national vote). The battlegrounds in 2000, for example, did not include states that Dole won in 1996 or states that Clinton won by 20 points.
Why is a 7-point lead in Hawaii strong but a 7-point lead in Florida slight?
I’d be somewhat surprised if Bush didn’t stay around 40% on election day in HI and Kerry grabbed nearly all the undecideds to push 60%. As Charlie Cook has repeated a lot lately, Bush would be lucky to get 1/4 of the undecideds, which I suppose would be especially true in Democratic Hawaii.
A lead is a lead, and just like wars, one of the most common faults is fighting the last campaign instead of this one. Each year there are battleground states and safe states, but they’re not always the same ones.
Given that Gore won HI by 18 points and even Dukakis won it by 10, I wouldn’t describe a 7-point lead there as strong…if this poll is accurate, it is a disturbing one, in the same way that a poll showing a 7-point Bush lead in Indiana or South Carolina would be encouraging.
Roy