Donald Trump’s job approval rating may be heading downward.
A new USA Today/Suffolk poll shows President Donald Trump at a 38 percent approval rating, the lowest that poll has seen since the president took office. CNN also published a poll that showed Trump’s approval at 35 percent—tied for the lowest that poll has seen during this administration (though it’s worth noting that Trump fares better—at 39 percent approval – among registered voters). The averages have also shown some negative signs for Trump. FiveThirtyEight’s approval tracker shows Trump down a couple points compared to mid-February. According to RealClearPolitics, Trump’s approval increased significantly between mid-December and late January, but has since stopped growing and mostly hovered around 42 percent in February.
Trump’s response to the shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, might partially explain this decline. According to the CNN poll, only 33 percent of respondents approve of the way the president handled the shooting. That’s not a great number for the president—especially when other data suggests that people are paying more attention to Parkland than they have to other mass shootings. Google trends data has shown that in the wake of a mass shooting, there’s often a spike in Google searches related to the event followed by a relatively quick decline in interest in the event. But recent search data hasn’t shown the same precipitous decline in searches related to this shooting—suggesting that (if Google searches are a good proxy for the public conversation) Americans are still dialed into an issue where they disapprove of the president’s job performance.
Another part of the explanation may be Trump’s increased visibility. Three weeks ago I argued that a strong economy, the GOP tax reform bill’s increasing popularity and Trump’s relative silence all played a role in lifting the president’s poll numbers to an eight-month high. But it’s possible that the Parkland shooting, the allegations of domestic violence against Rob Porter, Robert Mueller’s recent moves in the Russia investigation and other political news stories have since pushed Trump closer to the center of the national conversation. And when Trump is playing a prominent role in the news, he sometimes reminds Trump-skeptical voters why they were skeptical in the first place.
This downward movement in the polls may be short-lived. Trump could rebound from this low, or his numbers could stabilize. But no matter what happens next, it’s worth charting these trends and developing theories so that help us better understand politics in the Trump era.
