Should worry about his approval rating
By Jonathan Bernstein
May 6, 2020, 7:30 AM EDT
... his approval numbers are still a bit better than usual: The 538 polling average estimate has him at 43.2% approval and 51.3% disapproval.
.. Trump’s numbers are up a bit from last week, but the mild pandemic rally that brought him to his best post-honeymoon rating last month is gone. That tiny rally remains remarkable. The president’s reaction to the virus consistently polls worse than governors in their states and his boost was much smaller than that for most foreign leaders. In fact, even Congress, according to a Monmouth poll out Tuesday, got about a 10 percentage-point bounce during the crisis. Not Trump ...
Trump’s net approval is -8.1 (that is, 43.2 approval minus 51.3 disapproval). The three recent presidents who were easily re-elected had solid positive net approval at this point: Richard Nixon at +17.7, Bill Clinton at +16.1 and Ronald Reagan at +15.3. The two most recent presidents both won somewhat narrowly; at this point, Barack Obama was at +1.7 and George W. Bush at -0.3. And then there were the two most recent losers. George H.W. Bush had fallen from a then-record approval down to -6.8 ...
... if voters react to the current recession the way they typically do in an election year, Trump will lose, and lose badly. It’s quite possible he was sunk as soon as the virus became a big enough threat that people cut back on normal activities, even before government-imposed restrictions. To have any chance, Trump needs for people to blame the recession on the pandemic while also not blaming the president for how he handled it. And that’s without getting into meat shortages and other potential bad news, given that voters have been known to blame politicians for such things ...
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-05-06/donald-trump-should-worry-about-his-approval-rating
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