President Trump’s base of support has long seemed impervious to external pressures. At a campaign rally in January of 2016, then-candidate Trump memorably quipped, “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.” On Monday morning, the president himself tweeted that his base is “far bigger & stronger than ever before,” pointing specifically to rallies held in Ohio and Pennsylvania, among other states.
But the results of a new poll tell a different story, one where a portion of Trump’s strongest base of supporters may have fallen away over the course of the summer. Republican firms Firehouse Strategies and Optimus surveyed likely midterm voters in Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Florida on Trump’s favorability once in April and again in August. In those four months, the share of voters with a “strongly favorable” opinion of the president shrunk from 35.3 percent to 28.6 percent.
Firehouse’s Alex Conant expounded on the poll’s results in a comment to Mike Allen of Axios, noting, “Strongly favorable views among GOP voters dropped from 54.1% to 44.9%, while unfavorable views increased from 20.5% to 27.9%.”
It’s possible some voters blame Trump for his party’s failure to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, a consequence he’s sought to avoid by actively pinning the failure on Congress. Trump’s attacks on Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a popular figure among those sympathetic to his administration, could have helped move the needle as well. Significant staff shake-ups in the White House are another potential source of trouble among the base.
On Sunday, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, a longtime pollster, conceded the president’s “approval rating among Republicans, conservatives and Trump voters is down slightly.”
“It needs to go up,” she admitted on ABC, adding that Trump’s base wants him to “focus on the agenda.”
According to Gallup’s daily tracking poll, Trump’s overall approval rating is at 37 percent, down from 45 percent in late January, but not far from, for instance, early lows in Bill Clinton’s presidency. Around day 140 of their first terms, both presidents hit 37 percent approval according to Gallup. By day 200, roughly where Trump is now, Clinton was back up to 44 percent.
Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
