I know we wish and believe it should be worse but Trump is at 41.5 at 538

[DemocratSinceBirth]

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/


That's not good for the incumbent party going into the mid terms.

If you scroll down to the bottom of the page you can see the parties of president's with higher approval ratings than Trump got wiped out in the mid-terms.

[renegade000]

1. A couple of points:

(1) The midterms are still three months away, and I suspect that the news environment is going to get even worse for Trump.

(2) Bush had about a 40% approval in 2006 and Obama had a 44% in 2010. Those were not good years for retaining control of Congress.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

3. Don't forget 1994. Clinton was at 48% approval with a economy growing at 4% annually.

And we got shellacked.

54 House seats lost
11 Senate seats lost.

[Hortensis]

23. Clinton was a bit of an anomaly as a Democratic

president who'd managed to get elected in what was an increasingly conservative era.

John Dean and the conservative scholars he references point to 1994 as the year the traditional political conservatism we'd had since its very recent birth (tagged at 1950) and that had replaced the New Deal era around 1978 was overthrown by increasing authoritarian extremism (the right's "postmodern" period continuing to today).

I.e., all hell broke loose on the right, rather literally. The attempt to create a responsible and stabilizing intellectual basis for conservatism was defeated. Traditional conservatives were purged from national government, and their barbaric authoritarian replacements tried ferociously to remove a democratically elected, popular president out of political spite and malice. Next step to a complete takeover of the government, they thought. A majority of the people then (something like 58%), moving/being moved farther right or not, were not happy with them, though.

[Wwcd]

2. Can bots & trolls vote in the polls?

Just wondering how the polling org's know who they are polling?

[DemocratSinceBirth]

5. If it's a phone poll a troll's vote counts as much as the next person.

Online surveys when done correctly with the proper controls should roughly approximate a random sample.

[RedSpartan]

4. Voter suppression and gerrymandering will limit the damage to the GOP.

I believe the Democrats will take back the house, but it won't be as huge a blowout as it should be.

[lapfog_1]

14. this

vote totals will be a blowout (where the Dems hold a seat it is going to be a blowout... in the districts gerrymandered for Democrats) but the repuke held seats will be much closer... but I predict a 15 seat majority for Dems in the House. The Senate may actually LOSE a seat (or maybe outside 2 seats). Hope not... hope it is a HUGE blue wave the wipes out gerrymandering and Russian hacks and propaganda and, yes, outright vote manipulation.

[Awsi Dooger]

18. Along with the fact that they are still motivated

Trump is an obsession with them. He'll campaign everywhere and rile up the base, no matter how many disgraceful lies are required.

Our advantage will come from independents, not superior turnout on our side vs. Republicans.

We have a considerable edge but it would be extremely unwise to look at that 41.5% in historical terms to project number of seats gained. As Nate Silver wrote a year ago, the GOP House edge is build to withstand a lot of water.

We desperately need that 7-8+ point margin in the House national vote. If we end up at +5 or + 6 it's going to equate to many devastating narrow losses in key districts. I've wagered on this stuff long enough to know how that plays out. You can't dismiss the math in favor of fanciful subjectivity.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

22. Amy Walter (Cook Report) is pretty sanguine

https://www.cookpolitical.com/index.php/analysis/house/house-overview/what-august-ratings-can-tell-us-about-november-results

[wonkwest]

20. Precisely this

I don't think we're going to see as many seats flipped as poll numbers would suggest due to those two factors.

I'm pretty cautiously confident we take the house, but I don't think our majority is going to be overwhelming.

The Senate seems a toss-up. We're defending far too many seats as opposed to Republicans.

[Garrett78]

6. What really stands out is how steady his approval rating has been.

His level of support has barely wavered.

[Demovictory9]

7. interesting article at same link: The Gender Gap Among Midterm Voters Looks Huge -- Maybe Even Record

The Gender Gap Among Midterm Voters Looks Huge — Maybe Even Record-Breaking

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-gender-gap-among-midterm-voters-looks-huge-maybe-even-record-breaking/?src=obsidebar=sb_1

Poll(s) of the week
The gender gap — the fact that women tend to vote Democratic at a higher rate than men do — has been a persistent feature of American politics, and it’s only getting wider. According to 2016 exit polls, women voted for Hillary Clinton by 13 percentage points, and men voted for President Trump by 11 points. That 24-point gap in the national popular vote was the biggest in the history of the presidential exit poll.

This week, we got a poll showing that same 24-point gender gap in the only “national” election of 2018: the national popular vote for the U.S. House. A YouGov survey found that male voters preferred the Republican candidate by 9 percentage points, while female voters preferred the Democratic candidate by 15 points. It was a bit of an outlier, but not egregiously so: A RealClearPolitics-style average1 of generic-ballot polls taken in the past two weeks reveals a gender gap of 16 points, and the two highest-quality polls from that period — Quinnipiac and Marist — each showed a gap even bigger than 24 points. If YouGov, Quinnipiac or Marist is correct, then just like 2016 broke a gender-gap record for presidential races, 2018 will have the widest gender gap in congressional elections since at least 1992.2

[brooklynite]

8. "That's not good going into the mid terms"

Donald Trump won't be on the ballot in 2018. And a national approval number doesn't translate to individual States and Congressional District

[DemocratSinceBirth]

11. There's a whole body of scholarship/analysis between a president's approval rating

There's a whole body of scholarship/analysis/research on the correlation between a president's approval rating and his or her party's standing on the generic ballot



https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/10/politics/presidential-approval-rating-voters/index.html

https://news.gallup.com/poll/141812/avg-midterm-seat-loss-presidents-below-approval.aspx

https://people.howstuffworks.com/when-presidential-approval-ratings-really-matter.htm

[brooklynite]

12. And there's a whole body of hard data that identifies the number of competitive/D leaning races

...and that list has been growing.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

15. You get it. That list has been growing as Trump's approval ratings stay in the doldrums.

That said, the overall pattern in 2006 and 2010 is similar. The president’s weak approval ratings don’t improve between the summer and November, and seats held by the party of the White House that looked somewhat secure over the summer, are much more vulnerable by the fall. Pay close attention to how big the GOP Toss-Up column gets between now and November.

https://www.cookpolitical.com/index.php/analysis/house/house-overview/what-august-ratings-can-tell-us-about-november-results

[brooklynite]

13. Who's the new Senator in Trump-friendly Alabama?

[DemocratSinceBirth]

16. You mean the race where Trump was at 48% approval in exit polls

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/politics/alabama-exit-polls/?utm_term=.079ef0b5df6a

[bearsfootball516]

9. I'm not sure what you mean by "That's not good going into the mid terms."

His approval is hovering around 41. That's awful. If that maintains, it's going to be a slaughter.

[MFM008]

10. Russians

And gerrymandering arent going to save his ass this time.
I know people who are either signing up or registering to vote that hasn't voted in over 10 years if ever.

[oberliner]

17. Wow I forgot how unpopular Reagan was for a while

[DemocratSinceBirth]

21. Reagan was at 41.2% approval at this point of his tenure.

Last edited Fri Aug 3, 2018, 05:47 PM - Edit history (1)

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/


His party went on to lose 26 House seats and House control and seven gubernatorial seats.

[oberliner]

24. The crazy thing is that he then went on to win re-election by a massive landslide

By the 84 election his approval rating was close to 60.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

25. Because the economy turned around.

The nation was also a much different place demographically.

[oberliner]

26. Interesting that Trump's approval rating is so low in spite of a relatively strong economy

That's pretty unusual, I would think, for a POTUS.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

27. Even with this polarized electorate a less divisive POTUS would be higher

I have seen some pundits/analysts suggest fifteen points higher.

[DetroitLegalBeagle]

28. I've heard thats a point of concern among pollsters

They said (think it was a 538 podcast earlier this year) Trump is such an anomaly and polarizing figure, that his approval rating may be more of a product of how much people dislike him personally over how they think the job is being done. If that's the case, his approval numbers may be somewhat divorced from the actual electoral outcome.

So basically, VOTE! Drag a friend or three to the polls as well.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

29. Several points.

1) Trump ,of course, lost the popular vote receiving 46%
2) Of that 46% 20% had deep reservations about his character
3) That's 9.2%
4) Subtract 9.2% and you get 35.8% which was roughly his Charlottesville lows.
5) Of voters who disliked Trump and Clinton equally Trump won the lion's share of them.
6) If he was to see a rise in his approval numbers he would have seen it by now.




P.S. Thank you for your service.

[Garrett78]

30. And we would have seen a decline by now, as well.

His approval rating has been remarkably steady.

[beachbum bob]

19. I'm perfectly happy with trump at 41.5.....he still sucks