Trump approval rating slipping in Midwest
As The Hill reported, Trump's approval rating among his supporters in the Midwest appears to be declining, according to a series of Hill-HarrisX polls since July. Of those surveyed, 47 percent of Midwest voters said they approved of Trump's job in office last July, with his highest mark among those voters reaching 54 percent in the months of October and December. In the latest Hill-HarrisX survey in February that number had slipped to only 40 percent of Midwestern voters saying they approved of the president. The polls also show rising disapproval of Trump among Midwest states, with 53 percent saying they disapproved of Trump in July and 60 percent saying the same in February. The trend could end up being a problem for Trump, who scored crucial victories in 2016 in Midwest states like Wisconsin and Michigan, helping to propel him to an Electoral College victory.
"When it gets down to it, the president is going to get re-elected or defeated on a state-by-state basis," Chris Wilson, chief strategist at WPA Intelligence, told Hill.TV'S Krystal Ball on Wednesday. "So the numbers I'm most concerned about are those in states like Michigan, and Pennsylvania, and Iowa, and Wisconsin. States that he won last time that Republicans hadn't won in a long time," he continued. Trump's approval ratings also saw a decline in the south, another political stronghold for him. Fifty-two percent of southern voters said they approved of him in July and now 46 percent say they approve of him in that region.
There was also a rise in the president's disapproval rating in the south, with 48 percent saying they disapproved of him in July, and 54 percent saying the same in February. Trump's national approval rating currently sits at 45 percent, according to the latest poll, while his disapproval rating is at 55 percent. The states included in the Midwest category were Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota. The Southern states were Delaware, Washington, D.C., Florida, Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas.
The polls were conducted among statistically representative samples of about 1,000 registered voters. Each of them has a sampling margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
Trump’s rising poll numbers raise a question
As Bostonglobe reported, Looking at both the latest polling and the more precise picture of President Trump that has emerged since he took office, you arrive at a reluctant conclusion and a perplexing question. First, the 2020 presidential race will likely shape up not as a broom-out-a-buffoon sweep but as a tough, competitive election. So what, exactly, would it take for Republicans to abandon this dishonest, divisive, dysfunctional president?
Everyone should know by now that major aspects of Trump’s self-spun personal story are fraudulent. We’re all familiar with the narrative: An indomitable dynamo who by dint of his coruscating intellect won admission to an elite college and then, with the help of a (later repaid) $1 million loan from his father, built a billion-dollar business empire.
This week The Washington Post revealed as bogus another bit of that biography with its revelation that Trump’s admission to the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania was aided by a close friend of his older brother. James Nolan, now 81, told the Post’s Michael Kranish that when working in the university’s admissions office in 1966, he got a call from his very close friend Fred Trump Jr. seeking help with brother Donald’s hoped-for transfer from Fordham to the Wharton School. Nolan was accommodating, meeting with Donald and his father and then giving Trump a rating that apparently aided his application. Further, despite his many assertions about his intellect, Trump wasn’t even on the dean’s list his senior year, the Post reports. By itself, none of that is big or surprising news, but it does highlight once again the gap between Trump’s autobiographical boasts and the actual privileged nature of his advancement.
After graduating, Trump avoided the Vietnam War-era draft with the help of a diagnosis of bone spurs, which earned him a medical deferment. Except that, as The New York Times has reported, the daughters of the physician who diagnosed that supposed condition say he did it as a favor to father Fred Trump, who owned the building where the doctor had his office.
In fairness, that’s an anecdotal account, one without real proof. But The New York Times had documentation aplenty for its investigative report that, rather than parlaying his father’s $1 million loan into a fortune, as he has often claimed, Trump was the beneficiary of some $413 million (in today’s dollars) funneled his way by the family patriarch. Despite that, as a businessman, Trump still resorted to bankruptcy no fewer than six times. Imagine for a moment the derision the GOP would heap on a Democratic president with such a dubious record. And yet, most Republicans don’t seem to blink an eye at Trump’s history. Or his Potemkin village personal narrative.
Equally puzzling is the backing he receives from the evangelical community and other conservatives who, in different circumstances, claim that morality and character matter to them. After all, even if one doesn’t include the various allegations of forced or unwelcome lip kisses, at least 10 women have accused Trump of sexual misconduct over the years, including author and columnist E. Jean Carroll, who recently said that Trump attacked and (though she didn’t use the word) raped her in the mid-1990s in a luxury department store dressing room, an incident she told friends about at the time.
Even if assembling an anti-abortion majority on the Supreme Court is an important priority for someone, how, exactly, can he or she maintain support for a politician after such a litany of accusations? A moralist’s response might be that, character notwithstanding, Trump at least steers by crucial Republican tenets. Except that he has abandoned as many as he’s upheld. Fiscal discipline? Free markets and free trade? A strong US-led Western alliance? All in exile. So, too, are broader American values such as a basic regard for the truth. Or respect for the rule of law. Or a commitment to transparent, ethical, non-nepotistic government. And yet, this president now seems positioned to run a competitive race in 2020. As discouraging as his presidency has been, that’s the truly dismaying commentary about our country.
Even when accounting for ‘Shy Trump Voters,’ the President needs his numbers to improve
National Review reported: Is there a shy Trump voter factor the way they're used to be “shy Tory factor” in polls? Probably. The final polls in Michigan in 2016 put Hillary Clinton ahead by 4 to 5 percentage points, and Trump won by three-tenths of one percentage point. The final polls in Pennsylvania in 2016 put Hillary Clinton tied to leading by 4 points, and Trump won by seven-tenths of one percentage point. The final polls in Wisconsin in 2016 put Hillary Clinton ahead by 6 to 8 points, and Trump won by seven-tenths of one percentage point.
The good news for the Trump reelection campaign is that that they can feel reasonably optimistic that Trump will outperform the final polls conducted before Election Day 2020. The bad news is, we don’t know if this “shy Trump voter factor” will be good for one percentage point, 5 percentage points, or 10 percentage points.
Let’s say the shy Trump voters are worth a five-point swing in favor of Trump compared to the most recent numbers in key states. In a matchup against Joe Biden, Trump would still lose Michigan, lose Pennsylvania, and lose Wisconsin, as well as losing the national popular vote by a slightly larger margin than in 2016. If Biden won those three states and kept Hillary Clinton’s states, he’s at 278 electoral votes and Trump would be a one-term president. If you’re wondering about the other likely swing states, with a five-point swing, Trump would still win Ohio. The limited number of polls in Florida range from a tie to nine-point lead for Biden and North Carolina has an even wider range. Iowa would probably be close.
All of this is when the economy is rocking and rolling; there’s no guarantee that the economy will be doing as well in 15 months. To feel good about Trump’s odds in those states, you must assume his shy supporters are worth a swing of 8 to 10 percentage points from the current numbers. The “shy Trump voter” effect probably varies from state to state. The point is, in most of the big battleground states, Trump doesn’t need to do slightly better than his current poll numbers. He needs to do way better than his current poll numbers, even when you give him a generous assessment of hidden support that isn’t showing up in opinion surveys but will in show up polling places.
Will Biden, or any other Democratic nominee, be in weaker shape in autumn 2020 compared to now? Probably, Democrats look set to have a long, bruising primary. But that primary fight would have to get awfully nasty to persuade a significant number of self-identified Democrats to stay home and not vote. In a heavily polarized era, the vast majority of Biden supporters will end up supporting Kamala Harris if she’s the nominee and vice versa.
Trump can and probably will tie the Democratic nominee to the current radical policies being embraced during this primary — de facto open borders, elimination of private health insurance, taxpayer-funded health care and education for those who cross the border illegally. He and his team may feel confident about the potency of the message, “Even if you don’t like everything I’m doing, electing a Democrat means empowering someone who prioritizes other country’s citizens over American citizens.”Those positions or other flaws may well drag down Democratic candidates in head-to-head matchups against Trump — but they haven’t done so yet. Coaches sometimes tell athletes, “Even if you’re ahead by ten points, play as if you’re behind by ten points.” Considering his current ominous poll numbers, the Trump campaign should indeed work as if they’re 10 points behind.
MNA/TT
Your Comment