“Mr. Trump’s job approval rating rose to 45% in a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, the highest mark of his presidency and up 1 percentage point from June….
Underpinning Mr. Trump’s job approval was support from 88% of Republican voters. Of the four previous White House occupants, only George W. Bush, in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, had a higher approval rating within his own party at the same point in his presidency.”
Donald Trump appears to be defying gravity:
When it comes to polling, Mr. Trump has proved paradoxical.
“Welcome to the latest and most daring of Donald Trump’s high-wire acts, in which the president increases his degree of difficulty and manages yet again to stay on his feet,” said Fred Yang, a Democratic pollster who helped conduct the survey with Republican Bill McInturff.
These survey results point to the greatest threat to a Blue Wave election that flips the House from Republican to Democratic control in November. Wave elections are powered by the amped up enthusiasm of voters in one party and the deflated spirits of voters in the other party. Both factors contribute. (Let’s set aside for another time various definitions of ‘wave election.’ For the purposes of this post, just suppose that we’re considering something simpler: Whether or not the Democrats will retake the House in 2018. Of course a host of factors, not just emotional highs and lows, generate election victories. And a host of factors, including events that will take place between now and November 6, will influence the results this fall. Put aside these complicating factors for the purposes of this discussion.)
Donald Trump’s support is ‘paradoxical’ because, on the one hand, surveys show he is highly unpopular (“Mr. Trump’s overall approval rating continued to rank among the lowest of any modern president at this point his first term, and the poll turned up warning signals for him.”) and he persists in acting as president of a factional government: he is focused on his base (not unusual), but (unlike previous post-World War II presidents), he is making few if any moves to attract support from voters not already on board with him. Much of what he says and does appears by design to alienate folks who aren’t part of his base – which “increases his degree of difficulty,” as Yang observed.
On the other hand, focusing virtually exclusively on the base is working for him on at least one level: His support, as measured by polling, shows that he has an extremely high “own party” approval rating. (In polling at the 500-day mark, approval from his own party exceeded every previous president, going back to Truman at the beginning of the polling era, with the single exception of the 43rd president, when Americans rallied ’round the Commander in Chief following 9/11.)
Paradoxical though it may be, Trump’s strategy is to focus on riling up his base – and the way to do that is often to deliberately provoke the opposition. A headline in this morning’s Washington Post featured a quotation from Paul Ryan (on the proposal to revoke security clearances of Trump critiques). Said the Speaker of the House: “I think he’s just trolling people.”
I agree. I believe this is a deliberate strategy. Like the popular campaign chant, “Lock her up!” (which Jeff Sessions heard and repeated this morning while addressing a crowd of conservatives), this is another case of trashing longstanding institutional and governing norms. And that’s the point: Trump vents, critics jump, and his base rallies behind him.
The result – as the Wall St. Journal/NBC News poll suggests – is an extraordinary level of support from the GOP base, at a time of general presidential unpopularity. This is something we haven’t seen before.
Republicans are doggedly sticking with Trump, even as his overall approval numbers are at historic lows.
There have been mixed signals regarding the likelihood that we are heading into a wave election, or even a more modest result that will bring a Democratic majority to Congress.
All kinds of things can – and will – happen between now and election day, but at this stage, the greatest threat to Democrats flipping the House is the possibility of sky high Republican turnout for an unpopular and divisive president.
November 21, 2018 update: Donald Trump succeeded in generating the “sky high Republican turnout” I referenced in this post. But there just weren’t enough of them to hold back the Blue Wave: “Trump’s Base Isn’t Enough.”