Thursday, December 13, 2018

EVERYTHING IS FALLING APART FOR TRUMP EXCEPT HIS POPULAR SUPPORT

President Trump is an unindicted co-conspiracy, hounded by the special counsel and the Southern District of New York. He was owned this week in a televised metting with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. His party lost forty seats in the House. He's struggling to find a chief of staff.

His presidency seems to be falling apart -- but public support for that presidency isn't. This is from Fox News:
Overall, 46 percent of voters approve of the job Trump is doing and 52 percent disapprove. In January, it was 45-53 percent. Moreover, approval has barely budged all year, staying within the narrow range of 43 to 47 percent.
I know, I know -- it's Fox. But Fox, as I've said for years, oversees a respectable poll. The Fox poll isn't Rasmussen. Its results are very close to the results of other pollsters.

Trump's Real Clear Politics average hasn't really budged since late spring. Look at the right side of this chart:



On May 1, Trump's approval and disapproval numbers, according to Real Clear Politics, were 43.3%/52.8%. On July 1, they were 43.4%/51.9%. On September 1, they were 42.2%/54.1%. Now they're 43.1%/52.2%.

CNN's latest poll is worse for Trump than Fox's -- job approval is 39%/52% -- but the CNN poll has always been one of Trump's worst polls, and his numbers have remained fairly steady since spring:



Emerson has Trump at 43%/47% -- in October it was 43%/50%, in August 38%/53%. NPR/Marist has Trump at 43%/49% -- in October it was 41%/53%, in early September it was 38%/54%.

And the Gallup approval numbers are even more shockingly steady:



So if you're waiting for the moment when it dawns on Trump's supporters, or at least his soft supporters, that he's a crook, a traitor, and incompetent, and that they'd be better off unloading him, that's just not happening yet. Maybe it will happen in a week or a month, but for now the fans, including the ones who are supposedly not superfans, seem unmovable.

Here are Nixon's Gallup numbers, by the way:



They're steady, like Trump's -- until just after the second inaugural, at which point they undergo a severe, irreversible slide.

Will that happen to Trump now? Maybe if Democrats in the House can package their findings in a more vivid way than Robert Mueller and the Southern District. Maybe if there are new revelations that are shocking and easy to grasp.

I continue to believe that this time is different -- if we drive Trump from office, it won't be at a time when even supporters are abandoning him. We'll have to roll right over them. And in the future, they'll never accept the notion that Trump deserved it.

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