Trump’s approval now ratings far worse far worse than at the midterms when the Dems gained 41 house seats
The big political polling numbers that get most attention in US politics are the President’s approval ratings and these are seen to be good predictors of electoral outcome. Thus the 10% approval deficit that Trump had ahead of the November midterms was enough for pundits to predict that the Republicans would lose the House by some margin. That is what happened.
Since then we’ve had the government shutdown when 800k federal employees went without pay for nearly 5 weeks, the threat of the President taking emergency powers to build his wall, and the the attempt to find an agreement before February 15th when the current government funding resolution expires.
The Real Clear Politics polling average, seen in the chart above, shows how damaged the Trump now is in these predictive ratings. He’s now nearly 4 and a half points worse off then he was in November and that doesn’t look good.
Things, of course, can get better and we learnt from 2016 how effective Trump is mobilising his base ahead of an election. There are signs though that his base is narrowing with some polls finding that he’s struggling with working-class white males who have been his biggest supporters.
His re-nomination is far from assured with several leading figures contemplating a run.
On Betfair it’s now just a 30% chance that Trump will be re elected in November next year.