The polls don’t exactly speak with one voice as to President Trump’s approval and disapproval ratings. Recent polls have shown his net approval rating at anywhere between minus-three (Fox News) and minus-15 percentage points (IBD/TIPP).
The new Quinnipiac survey falls well within the lower range at minus-22 points — but what’s more important is that it’s ticked downward six points from the university polling outfit’s survey three weeks earlier. The new survey, nearly all of which was conducted before FBI director James Comey’s firing, shows Trump’s approval dropping into the mid-30s, although not quite as low as it was in early April (35 percent).
At 36 percent approve and 58 percent disapprove, Trump’s net approval is tied for its worst yet in Quinnipiac’s reckoning since his inauguration. And because the five-day poll ended yesterday, the Comey situation hasn’t really filtered into the numbers yet one way or the other.
Republicans continue to approve (82 percent), and Democrats (90 percent) and independents (63 percent) continue to disapprove. Among the finer points, Trump is underwater on every issue (his best is terrorism, where voters disapprove, 48 to 45 percent), and now only 33 percent believe he is honest, compared to 37 percent in Quinnipiac’s last poll.
Does any of this matter in electoral terms? With most politicians, these numbers would imply his and his party’s impending political destruction. But when it comes to Trump, who just won the presidency a few months ago with a 38 percent approval rating, it’s kind of hard to say. He almost needs to be graded on a curve.
I’m also not inclined to assume anything concrete about the potential effects of an unpopular Trump in the 2018 congressional midterm. We just saw other Republican candidates outperform his numbers in many of the places where he’s least popular — the House GOP actually won the national popular vote for Congress by 1.4 million, whereas Trump lost the popular vote for president by about 2.9 million. So sure, this time Trump’s unpopularity could lead to a Republican rout, but the last time I wrote that it would, and felt quite sincerely certain that it would, I was just wrong. (In my defense, so was pretty much everyone else.)
One of the more amusing results in this poll comes in the form of the one-word reaction question: “What is the first word that comes to mind when you think of Donald Trump?” This month’s most popular responses, by number of people who uttered them out of the 1,078 voters surveyed nationwide:
- idiot: 39
- incompetent: 31
- liar: 30
- leader: 25
- unqualified: 25
- president: 22
- strong: 21
- businessman: 18
- ignorant: 16
- egotistical: 15
- asshole: 13
- stupid: 13
- arrogant: 12
- trying: 12
- bully: 11
- business: 11
- narcissist: 11
- successful: 11
- disgusting: 10
- great: 10
