Trump Should Worry About His Disapproval Rating

Jonathan Bernstein: “Trump remains unpopular. The FiveThirtyEight poll tracker estimates he’s at 42.3% approval and 52.2% disapproval. The historical comparison is as bad as ever: Of the 11 polling-era presidents through 929 days in office (Gerald Ford didn’t serve this long), he’s second-worst, beating only Jimmy Carter – and his disapproval just dropped behind Carter’s once again, making him dead last on that score.”

“It’s theoretically possible that an incumbent with a 42% approval rating could be reelected. Perhaps the electorate will be disproportionately drawn from those who like Trump. Perhaps there’s a polling error in his favor. Maybe an unusually high number of people who think he’s doing a bad job will vote for him anyway. After all, lots of voters picked Trump in 2016 even though they didn’t like him. And maybe he gets lucky again with the Electoral College.”

“That’s a lot of maybes, though, and none of them are guaranteed to help Trump. In fact, some of them could easily leave him doing worse than his polling suggests.”