Slipping with the faithful
by digby
A new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll finds Trump’s approval rating down and his disapproval rating up from a month ago. He currently stands at 39 percent approve, 53 percent disapprove — a 7-point net change from December when his rating was 42 percent approve, 49 percent disapprove.
He’s losing altitude even with some of those non-college educted white men and evangelicals.
This seems to be related to the shutdown although I don’t know that it isn’t a “last straw” situation rather than a specific reaction to that issue. It may just be that some of his people are starting to realize that it’s not working.
Maybe …
The president also faces some significant headwinds for re-election in 2020. Just 30 percent of registered voters said they will definitely vote for Trump in 2020, while 57 percent said they will definitely vote against him.
Just 76 percent of Trump supporters, 69 percent of Republicans and 58 percent of white evangelicals say they will definitely vote for him. Many, if not most, of them will likely vote for the president, but their softness in supporting him for re-election is a sign of vulnerability.
For context, in 2010, when asked about then-President Barack Obama, just 36 percent said they would definitely vote for him, while 48 percent said they would not. Obama went on to win with 51 percent of the vote.
But for Trump to have more than half the country already saying it definitely won’t vote for him indicates he is facing a difficult re-election.
“The president has had his base and not much else,” Miringoff said, “and when you look ahead to the election … he enters with a significant disadvantage. His re-election prospects would definitely be in jeopardy at this point.”
Trump has a lot of work to do to be able to reassemble the coalition that voted for him narrowly to win in the Electoral College in 2016. He lost the popular vote by almost 3 million votes and won just 46 percent of the vote. He won by about 70,000 votes combined between Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, all states that have trended away from the president during his first two years in office.
Of course, much depends on who he will face.
.