Is it too early to start looking at presidential approval ratings? The graph above from RealClearPolitics depicts President Trump’s approval rating as determined by the RCP index of polls from the time he assumed office to the present. Here’s President Obama’s approval rating over the corresponding period of his presidency:
There’s obviously a stark contrast. President Obama’s approval rating outweighed his disapproval rating by a whopping 40 points or more at the outset of his presidency and he enjoyed a brief honeymoon period, as illustrated by this graph of his approval rating throughout his presidency:
President Obama clearly had a floor of approval of around 40% and a ceiling of disapproval of around 40%. Maybe that was partisan politics; maybe it was racism; maybe it was some of both.
It’s still early days in the Trump presidency (GHU) but at this point it seems to me that it’s likely that President Trump has a floor of support of around 40% and a ceiling of disapproval of around 48%. That might look familiar to you.
So here are my preliminary observations:
- It’s still early days.
- This might be President Trump’s honeymoon period and his approval rating could crash very soon. If that’s the case, he won’t be around for long.
- If, on the other hand, President Trump won’t have a honeymoon period, his approval/disapproval right now could persist over a considerable period.
- You can’t see it from the charts above but, remarkable as it might seem, President Trump’s approval rating today is higher than it was on Election Day. Most of the recent polls are of all Americans rather than likely voters.
- My interpretation of that is that even some people who voted for Hillary Clinton want President Trump to succeed.
- A lot of voters voted for Trump without approving of him.
- Presently, Trump is doing very much what he said he would. That doesn’t suggest to me that an approval rating crash is imminent.
- If there’s a trend in his approval rating, it’s a slight one.
With Trump prediction is dangerous, but it seems to me the longer the negative numbers go on, the more “baked in” they become. In way, he’s kind of like Hillary – most people probably have made up their mind about him and it would take something extraordinary to change that.
And, what happens when a recession hits with these low numbers?
I can only give you my assessment. Given that much of his approval rating beyond his floor appears to be based on approval rating of his handling of the economy that could evaporate.
The question then becomes how hard is his floor? I only have intuition to go on but my intuition is that he has a hard floor at around 35% approval. That’s not low enough to put him into trouble.
Basically, I think he’s an unpopular president who has unqualified support from a little more than a third of the people.
I think that we are so polarized that his floor is around 40%, at least. Tribal affiliation dominates.
Steve
That’s possible. However, based on Gallup’s findings on party affiliation, strong party affiliation for each party is about at 31%. That’s how I came up with 35%.
It will be interesting to see how far tribalism goes because Trump is not a traditional Republican and has supported a lot of policies in the past that align more with Democrats.