Presidential Approval Rating Barely Budges After ‘Trump’s Worst Week’
After Trump’s “Worst Week” his approval plummets – I mean, barely changes 
Posted by William A. Jacobson Sunday, August 26, 2018 at 12:00pm
LEFT LEANING NBC/WSJ poll: Trump approval ‘remarkably stable’
 The convictions of Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen had #TheResistance giddy with excitement.
This was the end. He’s a gonner. WORST WEEK EVER.
So how does the polling after Trump’s worst week ever look?
 NBC News and the Wall Street Journal just released a poll, Trump approval ‘remarkably stable’ after a stormy week of bad news:
After a week that saw President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman convicted on eight counts of fraud and his former lawyer plead guilty to felony campaign finance charges, the president’s job approval rating remains virtually unchanged, new polling from NBC News and the Wall Street Journal shows….
Between August 18th and August 22nd — the day after the news involving former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and former Trump attorney Michael Cohen — the president’s approval rating stood at 46 percent approve, 51 percent disapprove.
In a separate NBC/WSJ survey, conducted August 22nd through August 25th, Trump’s approval rating was 44 percent approve and 52 percent disapprove. That’s within the poll’s margin of error.
Republican pollster Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies, who conducted this survey with Democratic pollster Peter Hart and his team at Hart Research Associates, called Trump’s approval rating “remarkably stable” despite the Manafort and Cohen developments, both of which became public on the same afternoon last Tuesday.
Hart adds that, for Democrats hoping to craft a midterm election strategy, the week’s news thus far “represents a fools gold opportunity rather than a silver bullet solution.”
The NBC/WSJ polls is almost exactly what Rasmussen finds as of August 24, 2018, 46% approval. On August 24, 2010, Obama had a 45% approval rating according to Rasmussen.
So despite a massively negative media environment for Trump and a massively positive media environment for Obama, Trump’s approval rating is about the same as Obama at a similar time in his presidency.
What does it all mean for November 2018? That same NBC/WSJ poll showed Democrats with an 8 point generic ballot lead. Other generic ballot polling averages slightly lower for Democrats. By contrast, in the Republican wave election of 2010, Republicans held a 9.6% generic ballot lead just before the election.
So Democrats have an advantage, which means turnout and peculiarities specific to particular races could be the difference as to whether Republicans hold the house.
The stability in Trump’s polling shows that people may be tuning out media hysteria. Foaming-at-the-mouth attacks on Trump and Trump voters may have achieved all it is going to achieve, which is mostly psychosis among liberals, but that may not be enough.
Perhaps that’s why, as Mike pointed out earlier, Democrats Have a New Midterm Strategy – Ignore Trump.
But he will not be ignored. |
