After 18 Months Of #Resistance, Perpetual Crises & ‘Fake News,’ Trump’s Poll Numbers Look Oddly Familiar

It’s been a wild year and a half in the still relatively young Trump presidency, which has been marked by perpetual #resistance, Trump’s ongoing war with the “Fake News Media,” and a steady flow of outrage from Trump critics — sometimes over legitimate mistakes, but often just a symptom of Trump Derangement Syndrome. But after all of the hand-wringing and hysterics, a look at public opinion over that period shows that it’s all had little lasting impact on how people feel about Trump.

At the end of the first full month of his presidency, Trump’s approval rating, according to RealClearPolitics’ average of the national polls, was 43% and his disapproval was 50%. Eighteen months and countless crises and scandals later, his approval stands at a familiar 43%, while his disapproval has inched up to 53%, about 3 points worse. Trump’s been at around that same split since the beginning of May.

While Trump’s numbers look almost identical to his early numbers, his approval certainly hasn’t been a flat line. His best performance was within the first two weeks of his presidency, when he reached 46% and his disapproval was at 48.3%. From about May 2017 all the way to early February 2018, Trump’s approval dipped to 40% or below and his disapproval reached as high as 58%. His biggest deficit, according to RCP’s calculation, was a brutal -21.1 (37 – 58.1) on December 13, 2017.

Yet, despite multiple studies finding press coverage of Trump being far more negative than for previous presidents, Trump spent early 2018 climbing back up to what has become his new norm, his approval rising to where it was at the end of February 2017 and his disapproval settling back down to a few points above where it stood in those early days.

While his average approval (43%) isn’t much to tweet about, according to Rasmussen’s daily tracking poll of likely voters, one of the more reliable of the polls, Trump is outpacing Obama at this point in his presidency. Rasmussen’s tracking poll for Obama on August 30, 2010 was 46% approval, 52% disapproval. Rasmussen’s latest split for Trump is 48 – 51:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Thursday shows that 48% of Likely U.S. Voters approve of President Trump’s job performance. Fifty-one percent (51%) disapprove.

The latest figures include 36% who Strongly Approve of the way the president is performing and 41% who Strongly Disapprove. This gives him a Presidential Approval Index rating of -5.

In other words, while the media coverage and often over-the-top response from activists to Trump would suggest that public opinion of him would have soured noticeably over the last 18 months, instead we find that he’s doing about the same as he was in the early weeks of his presidency, while some polls find him now faring about as well as or even better than Obama.

The post After 18 Months Of #Resistance, Perpetual Crises & ‘Fake News,’ Trump’s Poll Numbers Look Oddly Familiar appeared first on Conservative Fighters.

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