A transcript  excerpt from “Trump Is Failing and Unpopular—Brutal New Polls Confirm It,”  featuring  Greg Sargent’s interview at The New Republic with Lakshya Jain, a political data analyst and partner at Split Ticket, an organization devoted to mapping, modeling, and presenting electoral data through an approach driven by data science.” Note that the interview was conducted before the political fallout following Tuesday’s government shutdown and Quantico meeting:

What if we told you that Donald Trump is a really unpopular president? Would that surprise you? It’s certainly not something you hear much in the media. Yet in the last few days, five big national polls have come out showing Trump’s approval numbers in really terrible shape. This is even more visible on specific issues—on many of them, he’s polling in the thirties. He’s underwater on his supposedly strongest issue of immigration too.

And on top of that, a number of his most dramatic moments recently seem to have flopped for him—from the effort to fire comedian Jimmy Kimmel to the indictment of former FBI Director Jim Comey. Lakshya Jain, the co-founder of the data firm Split Ticket and head of political data at The Argument, has been making the case that Trump isn’t actually in such a strong position right now politically. So we’re going to talk about how the heck we can get this basic political fact—that Trump is very unpopular—more broadly understood. Lakshya, good to have you on.

Lakshya Jain: Hey, thanks for having me.

Sargent: So I’m just going to start with some numbers. The new Quinnipiac poll has Trump’s approval at an abysmal 38 percent, while 54 percent disapprove. The new Associated Press poll has him at 39 percent approving to 60 percent disapproving. The new Gallup poll has him at 40 percent to 56 percent. Reuters has him at 41 percent, and the new Economist/YouGov poll has him at 39–56. Lakshya, those numbers are bad. What’s your reading of these findings?

Jain: Oh, they’re horrible. And you know, this is as bad as I can remember it being for a first-year president, so to say. This is the second term, but it’s still the period in time at which the president’s approval ratings are generally at their highest. You know, Joe Biden ended his tenure extremely poorly in the court of public opinion, but it’s really important to remember that Biden was not this unpopular at this point in time in his first year. Trump is at levels that have only really been approached by Trump 1.0. That’s it.

That’s the only historical comparable. But Greg, what’s interesting to me, if I may, is that the disapproval this time is of a completely different nature, and I would argue a far more damaging nature than the first time around, because the first time around, it was centered around his abuse of the office, or so to say, people thinking he was unfit to lead the country. But people liked the economy. People really liked the economy under Trump. His economic numbers were consistently positive or break even the first time around. This time, what’s happening is people really hate Trump not for the abuse of office. They hate him for the economy.

Sargent: Well, let’s talk about some economic numbers, because if you drill down into these polls, they look even more gruesome for Trump. The Quinnipiac poll has Trump on the economy at 39 percent approving to 56 percent disapproving. On trade, he’s at 39 to 54. The AP poll has Trump on the economy at 37 to 62. On trade, 36 to 63.

So those numbers really bear out your point. And I think maybe what a lot of people haven’t really gotten their heads around, as well, is how bad the tariffs are for Trump. Can you talk about sort of how that stew has developed? He’s getting much more of what he wanted on the economy this time than he did last time, ironically enough, and that’s worse for him.

Jain: He’s getting much more of what he wanted, and people are getting much more of what he wanted. That’s important to note. And they all hate it, because the thing is the American people elected Donald Trump because they felt that Joe Biden was at fault for inflation.

And they thought that, given Trump’s economy and given how they felt Biden was unfit to lead, Trump would do a better job stewarding the economy. But this time around, they think he’s been obsessed with things like the woke culture wars and about persecuting his political opponents, and not focused enough on issues that they care about.

You know, when people say, the American people don’t care about all these things that elites think they do. I mean, that goes both ways, right? Like, yes, the democratic championing of norms has not worked out for them. And that is true. That is unquestionably true. But it is also true that Trump trying to focus all of his efforts on, you know, prosecuting his political opponents and going after them is also seen poorly because people don’t care about that. They’re like, why are you focused on that? My bills are so high.

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