I said yesterday that I thought we likely weren’t far away from the first national poll which showed Donald Trump’s approval number dipping into the 30s. And here we are: AP-NORC 39% approve, 59% disapprove.
I’ve said repeatedly that we are in the midst of a lengthy national struggle and that it is fundamentally over public opinion. To understand where we are, where we’re going and what the future possibilities are, everything must be seen through that prism. But I noticed a conversation yesterday that prompts me to be more specific.
NYT/Siena also released a poll showing Trump at 42% approval, 54% disapproval. One social media discussion of that poll pressed the point that public polls had underestimated Trump’s support three cycles in a row. That’s mostly true. With the NYT/Siena poll specifically, but like most other polls, the underestimation in 2024 was marginal. But still, three successive cycles in one direction for a specific candidate is striking in itself and very much out of the norm. But here’s the point I wanted to get to. President Trump won’t ever be on the ballot again. Maybe you think he’ll come up with an end-run around the 22nd amendment. I don’t for reasons I’ve discussed elsewhere and am happy to discuss again. I raise the point here, though, to note that in all these polls, which give us some broad sense of the public mood, satisfaction with or opposition to Trump’s presidency, we’re really talking not about Trump, but about congressional and other Republicans who sustain his rule.
He is, to put it as clearly as we can, a lame duck. But his supporters in Congress are not. It’s not a major point. It’s a level of detail which is either missed or just implicit in every discussion of public opinion. But it’s worth pulling it to the surface because it’s important to know just who these number impact. They impact Trump indirectly, through the behavior of those who again have to face the electorate.
