Trump in the Polls: All is Well, Despite What You Hear

What's that we hear?  Yet another liberal commentator declaring that President Trump is THE LEAST POPULAR PRESIDENT EVER, and his poll numbers continue to tank...  Of course, this nonsense is designed to discourage Republicans and conservatives, while it buoys the spirits of leftists.  Does it work?  No doubt to some degree it does, but the truth is that Trump's standing in the polls hasn't changed appreciably since he WON THE ELECTION!!!  Read all about it in my latest article:

Trump: He Takes a Licking and Keeps On Ticking

How many times in the last two years have media experts and leftist commentators announced the political death of Donald J. Trump? Surely he couldn't come back from the proposed “Muslim ban”? Surely he couldn't survive the Access Hollywood scandal? Surely the allegations of collusion with Russia, combined with his firing of FBI Director James Comey, would destroy his last vestiges of credibility? Most recently, liberals declared, surely his politically incorrect statements in the wake of the violence in Charlottesville would lead to his undoing?

The reader knows, of course, where this story ends. Each and every time that leftists have sought to write off Donald Trump, as a Presidential candidate, and now as a President, they have been proven dead wrong. Donald Trump weathers every storm – an apt metaphor for a nation that has just weathered two hurricanes – and he emerges, if not unscathed, unbowed and unbroken. More importantly, his visceral connection to his supporters, and their connection to him, survives, even thrives, despite this adversity. Liberals, by now, should know that the Trump phenomenon is not a flash in the pan. And yet they seem to have convinced themselves that just over the next rise will come the definitive, final collapse of Donald Trump. He will be impeached. He will resign. He will be declared mentally incompetent. Perhaps, just perhaps, aliens will kidnap him, along with the cabinet and the Republican leadership, and somehow Nancy Pelosi will end up in the White House. While liberals breathe, it seems, they hope.

Recently, we have seen confirmation that liberals' exultation in the wake of President Trump's Charlottesville comments, which they perceived as endorsements of racism and “Nazism,” were not perceived in the same light by the American people. Since mid-August, when the Charlottesville tragedy unfolded, Trump's job approval and favorability numbers have gone up, shattering liberals' expectations of a polling death spiral.

Moreover, for anyone who thinks President Trump's political goose is cooked, and he could not possibly win reelection in 2020, consider the fact that his favorability ratings now are higher than when he won the Presidency in November 2016. The numbers don't lie – and these numbers, I might add, are based on data aggregated from numerous public polls, most of which, as any Republican will tell you, are skewed in order to minimize Republican support. The important thing is the baseline, however: if Donald Trump can win the Presidency with an average favorability rating in the mid-30s, then he can certainly keep it with a rating in the high-30s. To suggest otherwise would be the height of naivete.

Lately, though, there is even more good news to cheer Republicans and Trump supporters. The Rasmussen Presidential approval numbers (the Rasmussen poll was among the most accurate in predicting the results of the 2016 election) have rebounded significantly since August. Trump's job approval reached an all-time low of 38%, but recently it rebounded into the mid-40s. Democrats, of course, can cling to the numbers in other polls, but they can't deny the trend: far from cratering, President Trump is clawing his way back to levels of approval and favorability that he almost never saw during the campaign.

None of this means that the media's incessant attacks on President Trump have been futile. On the contrary, they have managed to obscure many of the President's successes, and they have magnified his faults and missteps. The bottom line, however, is that Trump is still standing, and his base, by any objective measure, is roughly as large and as enthusiastic as it has ever been.

Try as they might to find the rhetorical “kill shot” that will bring Donald Trump down, liberals keep firing blanks. Maybe, just maybe, their panicked, scattershot approach – expressing maximum outrage at everything, and hoping that one of their phony scandals will stick – is the reason why.

Dr. Nicholas L. Waddy is an Associate Professor of History in the State University of New York and blogs at: www.waddyisright.com.