These aren’t the happiest days for Democrats, but the impact of so much wild lawlessness by Trump 2.0 should be offset a bit by indications the 47th president and his minions may be a bit over their skis, as I discussed at New York:
During the first month of his second term, Donald Trump’s popularity started out mildly positive but has slowly eroded, according to the FiveThirtyEight averages. As of January 24, his job-approval ratio was 49.7 percent positive and 41.5 percent negative. As of Thursday, it’s 48.7 percent positive and 46.2 percent negative, which means his net approval has slipped from 8.2 percent to 2.5 percent. The very latest surveys show a negative trend, as the Washington Post noted:
“Trump’s approval ratings this week in polls — including the Post-Ipsos poll and others from Reuters, Quinnipiac University, CNN and Gallup — have ranged from 44 to 47 percent. In all of them, more disapprove than approve of him.
“That’s a reversal from the vast majority of previous polls, which showed Trump in net-positive territory.”
Given all the controversy his actions have aroused, that may not be surprising. But he has some vulnerabilities behind the top-line numbers, mostly involving ideas he hasn’t fully implemented yet.
His proposals tend to be popular at a high level of generality but much less popular in some key specifics. For example, a February 9 CBS survey found 54 percent supporting his handling of the Israel-Hamas conflict, but only 14 percent favoring his idea of a U.S. takeover of Gaza. Similarly, a February 18 Washington Post–Ipsos poll found 50 percent of respondents approving of his handling of immigration, but only 41 percent supporting the deployment of local law enforcement for mass deportations, and only 39 percent supporting his push to end to birthright citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants.
Across a broad range of polls, Elon Musk’s assault on the federal bureaucracy is relatively unpopular. A February 19 Quinnipiac survey found 55 percent of registered voters believe Musk has too much power. An Emerson poll gave Musk a 41 percent job-approval rating, and an Economist-YouGov poll gave him a 43 percent favorability rating.
But by far Trump’s greatest vulnerability is over his management of an economy where renewed signs of inflation are evident, and where his policies, once implemented, could make conditions worse. Already, his job-approval ratings on managing the economy are slipping a bit, as a February 19 Reuters-Ipsos poll indicated:
“[T]he share of Americans who think the economy is on the wrong track rose to 53% in the latest poll from 43% in the January 24–26 poll. Public approval of Trump’s economic stewardship fell to 39% from 43% in the prior poll …
“Trump’s rating for the economy is well below the 53% he had in Reuters/Ipsos polling conducted in February 2017, the first full month of his first term as U.S. president.”
And a mid-February Gallup survey found 54 percent of Americans disapproving Trump’s handling of the economy and 53 percent disapproving his handling of foreign trade. More ominous for Trump if the sentiment persists is that negative feelings about current economic conditions are as prominent as they were when they helped lift Trump to the presidency. The WaPo-Ipsos poll noted above found that 73 percent of Americans consider the economy “not so good” or “poor,” with that percentage rising to 76 percent with respect to gasoline and energy prices and 92 percent with respect to food prices.
Republicans and independents will for a time share Trump’s claims that the current economy is still the product of Joe Biden’s policies, but not for more than a few months. A particular controversy to watch is Trump’s tariff wars and their potential impact on consumer prices. As the CBS survey showed, sizable majorities of Americans already oppose new tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and Europe, with tariffs on China being an exception to low levels of support for that key element of Trump’s economic-policy agenda. And the same poll showed 66 percent of respondents agreeing that Trump’s “focus on lowering prices” is “not enough.” He may have forgotten already how he won the 2024 election.
Nice Blog!
Reference the New York Times article on voter pick up in Ohio: the same information is also being reported by media outlets in Ohio, not a hotbed of liberalism.
Oh, the selected prime minister of iraq comes here and in effect tries to interfere with the election. he lies about what is happening in Iraq and the cons are outraged at Kerry? Excuse me, boys! The one to be outraged at are the liars, bush and alawi. And as i recall newsweek and cnn both use gallup poll numbers. that has been shown to be out of touch with reality. so where is the real discussion? where is the discussion about over 1000 dead in iraq? the WMD? the missing osama? the deficit? What in the world is wrong with you conservatives(not anappropirate name) more like big spenders? You attack the truth teller and applaud the liar. what is is the night gallery in real time? bush is a liar and a loser. he is losing the election. they lied to you about iraq. the media kissed up and carried it along. now why is there any question that the media is not doing it again. i would assume they were without any real indication they had reformed. duh!
Elrod,
Sorry to disappoint you but insofar as GWB is concerned, Saletan is no centrist – Indeed, he is a card carrying member of the Michael Moore (FahrenHype 911), Whoppi Goldberg (Kiss my ___), Terry McCaulliffe wing of the Dem party – In other words, he’s a Bush Hater in sheep’s clothing.
As for your supposition that Kerry’s attacks are resonating, reasonable people will disagree – Especially when you consider the battleground poll released last night showing he’s trailing GWB by 6 points.
Frankly, any benefit from his anti-Iraq War speeches was mitigated by his condescending and haughty attack on the very courageous PM of Iraq; Who couldn’t even thank us without having to see Kerry’s mug & gait flailing away on a subject which he knew very little about other than what sees on CBS and in the NY Times.
The Time poll is the best news I’ve read in awhile! 36R – 30D among RVs and the gap is closing. More important is Kerry’s attack on Bush’s Iraq policy is clearly hitting. The idea of a Bush-Iraq credibility gap is a powerful one. Hopefully Kerry can drive that point home in the debates.
BTW, this Will Saletan article on debate tactics is great. Saletan is a centrist who probably understands swing voters better than most of us.
http://slate.msn.com/id/2107141/
NEWSFLASH: BATTLEGROUND POLL – GWB 51%, KERRY 45%, GWB JOB APPROVAL 53%…
http://www.tarrance.com/Week2charts.pdf
Kerry is also behind 20% in fighting terrorism and Iraq; It’s tough for Kerry to win facing numbers like that.
I see many posters here are getting excited about the new Dem registration being reported by the NY Times in FLA & OH, and how these new Dems are not being captured in surveys. I have news for you all: The NY Times, like CBS, is in the tank for Kerry, and is trying desperately to salvage his candidate, especially since all their Abu Gharib, Richard Clarke, etc., stories couldn’t do the trick.
They also have reported very little on all the stories of possible vote fraud being perpetrated by Dems – ie 20,000 with dual NY & FLA voter registration reported by the NY Daily News a few weeks back, dead Dems in WIS with voter registration cards, et al.
They also do not fully explain how this phenomena is not the typical voter registration churn, or capture the intensity and enthusiasm likely to occur among Reps this year because of anger over the CBS fraud, the over the top hatred of President Bush, Kerry’s trashing and unpopularity with the military, etc.
My advice to Kerry supporters: Believe the NY Times at your peril.
To win, Bush must carry Ohio. Similarly, Kerry must take PA. to win. The question then might be, is Ohio more within the reach of Bush than PA is within the reach of Kerry?
Seems to me that Kerry must put more resources into PA to assure a win. Once he’s sure that the Keystone State is safely locked up, he can make his move on Ohio. The sooner he locks PA up the better his chances overall.
My biggest concern is the one someone mentioned: The lengths to which Republicans will go to reject Democratic voter registration. Republicans are notorious for doing such things to gain advantage, since they know they can’t win heads up.
El Guapo, you were great in THE THREE AMIGOS.
Regarding the comment above about the GOP skullduggery in rejecting new voter registrations….
OK, I agree that the GOP will stop at nothing to win this. But, at least in Pennsylvania, when you register to vote it’s not a mystery whether or not your application has been accepted or not. You get a voter registration card in the mail. So it’s not like you show up on election day and they can say, “Oops, sorry. You’re not on the rolls.”
OK…they’re Republicans…they cheat…so they COULD say that. But people who have just registered need to follow-up to make sure their applications went through and thus minimize the likelihood.
Sep 26
Rasmussen has a Bush only +1 in the horserace.
FL Kerry +1; MI K +4; MN tied; OH Bush + 4; NV tied.
A trend? We’ll see. Rove is dragging his feet on debate #1. Trying to raise expectations? Who would imagine?
Ethan, you hit upon something that I’d been mulling over myself for a while. If the popular Time/Gallup polls now show the race tightening (which they do) and they still oversample Republicans (which they do) then there can be only one conclusion:
Kerry pulls off an upset in a few “red” states.
Not to jinx it, but look for Kerry wins in almost all the “true battleground” states, plus maybe even a Kerry upset in a “close red” state (like VA, NC, or AR).
Plus the NY Times had an article showing registration in Dem-leaning counties was 6 times the registration jump in Rep-leaning counties in OH, and with a similar Dem registration lead in FL.
And Bush is now on the defensive, having to explain his rosy Iraq comments to an increasingly skeptical public.
There is a HUGE increase in new voters in both Ohio and Florida according to the New York Times. I live in Ohio and local news media is also reporting a huge increase in new voters in Democratic areas of Ohio. Will polls catch those new voters? How do polls handle situations where there is volatility in the numbers of registered voters?
To me the most important part of that poll was not that Kerry cut Bushes lead in half, it was two of the other findings; A majority think that Iraq has made the world less safe and 60% of likely voters find Kerry likable.
Those two things tell me that we can win.
Nice observation by Gabby Hayes, sidekick to Roy Rogers whom we all love and remember dearly. It’s clear from analyses here and elsewhere that these media-bought polls are cooking the books. It’s beginning to look like deja vu all over again vis a vis 2000 with polls showing Bush up several points just days before the election. Anyone for an October surprise?
Now we have destroyer fleets of the coast of N Korea. Dare anyone suggest Bush/Rove might be manufacturing a “crisis” or “imminent threat of ICBMs from NK” ?
Film at 11.
It would appear that Scott Rasmussen and Ruy Tiexera agree in principle of the RV/LV – 2-way/3-way thing.
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_5283.shtml
It’s an interesting analysis Gabby. I would tend to buy high 80s or even low 90s for the Bush voters. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 80-90% of registered voters do turn out to vote in a typical presidential election and it’s not uncommon to see slightly higer turnout for Republicans than Democrats (otherwise Democrats would win every time). But 97% does seem a little over the top.
While we’re on the subject, does anyone have any idea why Marist College’s LVs always seem to number <70% of their RVs?
BTW, wasn’t this Time poll something we were completely trashing a few weeks ago? Why would they be right now if they weren’t then?
No Gollum,
Ruys prime directive is to compare “apples to apples” – even if those apples have worms in them.
As was posted more extensively under the CBS poll story, the question will be how many of these new voter registration forms will be accepted by the Republican secretary’s of state in these battleground states, and how many will be thrown out for various technicalities like failing to check a box that you are over 18, even though you have provided your date of birth on another line. I think the Republican operative quoted in the NYT registration story has already previewed the upcoming Republican line for when these new voters are turned away at the polls on Nov 2: that the progressive voter registration groups did “sloppy work” which required all those nice new voter registrations to be thrown out by the poor secretarys of state, what a shame, etc. etc. Our opponents are quite determinedly anti-democratic and will stop at nothing to win.
Time Poll Sept. 21-23, 2004. N=1,014 registered voters nationwide, 877 likely voters.
I will now demonstrate how flawed this poll is.
According to the Time Poll, Bush has an edge of 54-42 among likely voters.
The pool of “likely voters” is 877 voters. 54% of that number is 474 “likely Bush Voters.”
Compare the pool of 1014 “registered voters.” 48% of that number is 487 “registered Bush Voters.”
So, we now know that under the Time poll, 474 likely Bush voters exist among 487 registered Bush voters.
In other words, Time is reporting that 97.3% of the registered Bush voters will vote.
Now compare the way they downsize the Kerry numbers:
Kerry has 44% of 1014, which is 446 registered voters.
But he only gets 42% of the 877 “likely voters” or 368 voters.
In other words, Time is reporting that only 82.5% of registered Kerry voters will vote.
To summarize, using their “likely voter” spin, they eliminated only 13 Bush voters, but threw out 78 Kerry voters to create a 54-42 split. That isn’t science, it’s skullduggery.
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I don’t see much data to suggest either giddyness or gloom. The election is still several weeks away. The dynamics will change in some way during this time. Perhaps multiple times. Be patient and effortful.
In that light, I do offer some promising information. I’ve been worrying about Pennsylvania. Using race2004.net for my state poll source, several polls right after the Republican convention mostly showed Bush in the lead. In polls dated at race2004 from 9/7-/9/15, [and not including polls from GOP or Dem organizations] Bush is up by 4% (Quinnipiac), 3% (TNS), 1% (Rasmussen), and 1% (Gallup). The race was tied per Keystone. Kerry was up in just 1 of these 6 polls (by 2%, Survey USA).
In the last 6 polls, 9/16-24, Kerry has been in the lead in 5. 3% for Opinion Dynamics and Zogby, 2% for Temple, and 1% for ARG and Mason Dixon. Bush led by 1% in the Rasmussen poll.
Kerry has to hold Pennsylvania.
And then there’s Ohio. In three of the 6 polls from 9/7 to 9/18, Bush had leads from 7-11%. Overall, these 6 averaged (unweighted) to a 5.5% /Bush lead. The last three polls have been closer, with Bush up by 4% (Opinion Dynamics), 3% (Rasmussen), and 2% (ARG).
Kerry needs to find a way to pull out Ohio. If he can get Ohio and hold all the Gore 2000 states, that would give him a 280-258 win. Kerry could then withstand losing Wisconsin and pull out a 270-268 win. [If that one Maine district were also to go to Bush, Kerry would then need to pull out one other small state, such as New Hampshire.]
There are other options. And this “only pick up Ohio” option would require Kerry either rallying from behind (2-6% in polls of the last week) in Iowa or pulling out two other small states such as New Hampshire (tied in the only poll from last week), Nevada (down 2% and 9% in the two polls from last week), or Arkansas (no polls last week, Kerry down 3% or tied the week before).
This is a very close thing this year. Keep focused and keep at it. And keep your fingers crossed for Kerry to do well this Thursday. Does anyone know how his cold is?
Sep 25
Rasmussen today has Bush only 0.6 ahead in the horserace. FL Bush +1, OH +3, PA +1, MN and NV tied. Kerry leads in MI.
And the voter reg numbers in the NY Times story is very heartening indeed.
QUESTION FOR RUY (or anyone else)
What do you make of the NYTimes article in Sunday’s pages that claims groups like ACT, etc., are kicking so much butt registering new Democratic voters. If that story is true — and the Times seems to have done exhaustive number crunching — then it would suggest that not only are the party ID weights misguided but that they ought to be weighted even more toward Demos than in 2000.
Is it possible that the 2004 election — with all the newly registered voters, with the gazillions of Bush-haters who don’t have a landline to answer phone polls, with so many young voters outraged after seeing Fahrenheit — will completely change the polling paradigm? It’s the TIVO election, in so many ways. People pay attention to what they want to pay attention to, only answer the phone if someone they know is calling and do not fall into any currently identifiable niches.
It just seems like the pollsters are using 20th Century methods to figure out the first race of the 21st Century.
Hey, I have a question for Ruy.
Over the last few weeks, you have written about popular polls, such as Gallup/CNN and said that they have oversampled Rs as a percentage of their sample population.
In the recent days, these polls have been tightening showing a closer race with Bush still in the lead, does this mean that in a sample that is overly populated with Republicans, Bush is ahead only by a small margin? Or have they changed their samples to include more Ds?
I think the implication here is obvious, so Ruy please explain this before I get giddy and wrongly warm myself to the thoughts of an election day landslide for Kerry!
Now the questions are: Will the media report this with the same zeal as they did the polling data of two weeks ago? What will the administration do to divert attention away from a “come back”-oriented story line in the press?
Also, an interesting story in the NYTimes about the onslaught of new voters registering in key states:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/26/politics/campaign/26vote.html?hp
Now…will they make it to the polls? Will the polls accept them?
This time: Likely voters reported party identifications are: 36% Republican, 31% Democratic, 24% Independents. Registered voters party affiliations are: 36% Republican, 30% Democratic, 24% Independent.
The 9/10 poll: Likely voters reported party identifications are: 34% Republican, 35% Democratic, 22% Independents. Registered voters party affiliations are: 31% Republican, 32% Democratic, 26% Independent.
Am I missing something? More Republicans, fewer Dems and the margin is still cut in half.
I don’t believe that Nader has support as high as 5%, which makes me disbelieve the rest of the poll.
BTW, wasn’t this Time poll something we were completely trashing a few weeks ago? Why would they be right now if they weren’t then?
It boggles my little mind. Who are they polling? I can’t believe that Bush fatigue has simply vanished.