TO TRUMP: POLLS ARE MOST IMPORTANT TO U.S. PRESIDENCY

…Our president

If polls are most important, President Trump is in big trouble.

POLLS, POLLS, POLLS, if that’s all the president cares about, he might as well give up now and let Vice President Pence take over.

According to a Washington Post-ABC News poll, President Trump has underperformed for even the modest expectations that his base had for him as he took office in January 2017.

Here are the basic numbers from this latest poll showing what was expected in job performance versus how the American public feels today.

AFTER INAGRUATION                                             January 2019   

• Overall positive expectations:  61%                        49%

• Supreme Court Nominees        49%                         43%

• Health Care                                44%                         33%

• Helping Middle Class                50%                         33%

• Race Relations                          40%                         34%

• Women’s Issues                        37%                         23%

• Budget Deficit                            50%                         33%

This latest assessment of Trump measures his public standing across these major issues and character traits.  The overall job-approval rating languishes at 37%, one point above his record low in August.  Nearly 6 in 10 say they have an unfavorable view of the president as a person.  Similar majorities say they dislike his empathy, honesty and lack of an ability to make political deals.

As he begins the second half of his first term, Trump has suffered the most significant defeat of his presidency, having capitulated to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and other congressional Democrats in a standoff over building a wall along the US-Mexico border.  This dispute brought about the longest US government shutdown in history, (35 days).

Trump’s failed gamble that he could force Democrats to blink first has caused dismay among many congressional Republicans.  It also threatens to call into question the president’s false claim of being an effective dealmaker.

A 57% majority rates Trump negatively for his handling of border security, the signature issue on which he began his presidential campaign.  That is similar to the 54% who oppose building a wall, which he falsely insists is necessary to stem a “growing humanitarian and security crisis” at the southern border.

The survey shows that only 35% of Americans say they have confidence in the president to make the right decisions for the country’s future. The poll also shows that 30% percent say that Republicans in Congress make the right decisions..

Almost half of all Americans (48%) say they have no confidence in Trump’s future decision-making.  For congressional Democrats and Republicans, about 3 in 10 give each party the lowest level of confidence.

On economic issues, Americans had high expectations about the ability of the New York businessman and builder to handle an economy that was growing steadily, if slowly, after the financial crash a decade earlier.  But the president has improperly taken credit for the economy’s increases that had continued to climb regardless of who was president.

In the last two years, the pace of economic growth has increased and the unemployment rate has dropped even lower, in part because of the big tax-cut bill that Republicans approved and the president signed.  Unfortunately, that tax cut seriously increased the national deficit.  The stock market, after a strong rise during the first two years of Trump’s presidency, it recently experienced a sharp drop and volatility amid doubts about the future.  Those doubts center around the Trump administration's management.

To the American people, those doubts add up to seriously lower ratings for the president since his inauguration.  At that time, about 6 in 10 Americans expected him to perform well on most fronts.  Today, the public is divided evenly, with 49% giving him positive marks on his handling of the economy and 49% giving him negative marks.

Two years ago, 50% of Americans thought Trump would do an excellent or good job handling the deficit. The new poll finds only 33% saying he has done well, a 17-point drop that occurred across party lines. Notably, many Republicans have shifted in their views. Two years ago, 87% of Republicans said they expected him to deal with the deficit effectively. Today, 67% of that group think he has done that.  Among independents, the number who say he would effectively tackle the deficit has dropped from 52% to a devastating 27%.

Another issue where Trump has performed below initial expectations is health care, where his positive ratings have fallen from 44% to 33%. The sharpest fall-off came among independents, from 48% saying they expected him to do a good job with the issue to 22%.  When Trump came into office, he and Republicans promised to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA), but as it turns out, the American public actually grew to like the ACA.  The aspirations to kill the ACA eventually died in Congress.

Along with the deficit and health care, Americans grade Trump the worst on issues dealing with women and race relations.  These are both areas in which the president had started with low expectations.  Today, more than 6 in 10 adults are today calling his performance poor.

Trump also receives lower marks as a person, than as a president.   Only 1 in 3 Americans saying they have a favorable impression of him “as a person.”  On attributes, Americans were least likely to say Trump understands problems of people like them or is “honest and trustworthy” and they were widely divided on whether he is a strong leader.

On attributes relating to the conduct of a president, majorities say Trump does not have the personality or temperament to be president, and that he is not an effective political dealmaker.  Nor do they think he has fulfilled a basic campaign promise, with a majority saying he has not brought the needed change to Washington's swamp.

On the economy, the drop to Trump’s current ratings was largest among political independents. Two-thirds (67%) had hoped for a good performance, but just under half have said he did a good job.  That's a decrease of 18 percentage points.

Both white and nonwhite people rated Trump’s economic performance lower than they had expected, both with similar declines.  But a majority of white, non-college educated Americans approve of Trump’s economic performance, while only a third of nonwhite Americans gave him good or excellent grades on the economy.

Among women, Trump’s overall positive rating fell from 33% to 23%.

Regionally, dissatisfaction with the economy was greatest in the West, where 58% of people had expected success but only 40% say Trump did well. The South had held the highest expectations when Trump began, with two-thirds optimistic (66%), but just over half now approve of his performance. The Midwest showed the least disappointment, dropping only five percentage points, to 54% approval.

Disappointment with Trump’s help for the middle class was strongest among households with lower incomes.  When he took office, about half of families of all incomes expected him to have success in helping the middle class. But after two years, only 33% households gave him a thumbs-up.

The Post-ABC poll was conducted among a random national sample of 1,001 adults, with 65% reached on cellphones and 35% on landlines.

Overall results have a 3.5% margin of error.

Copyright G. Ater  2019