President Trump’s job approval ratings appear to be relatively stable with the midterm elections fast approaching, a new American Barometer poll finds.
The survey of 1,000 registered voters conducted Oct. 16 and 17 for Hill.TV by HarrisX found that 46 percent of respondents said they approved of his performance, while 54 percent disapprove.
Those results reflect a minimal overall change from an earlier Oct. 1-2 survey which found that 45 percent of registered voters approved while 55 percent disapproved.
“If you look at the numbers, he has a Trump base — not a Republican base — of about 32, 33 percent. And then you have another group that didn’t like his persona but liked his policies of about 12 percent,” Ed Goeas, a veteran GOP pollster, said Wednesday on Hill.TV’s show “What America’s Thinking.”
According to Goeas, that smaller segment of lukewarm Trump supporters appears to have “locked in” its preference after Trump and congressional Republicans passed a tax cut bill.
Meanwhile, the latest survey showed that the president’s ratings among women has improved.
The earlier study found that only 37 percent of female voters approved of Trump’s job performance. It was conducted as the White House sought to fend off controversy surrounding Brett Kavanaugh, who was successfully confirmed to the Supreme Court after facing accusations of sexual harassment and assault.
The most recent poll found that 43 percent of women surveyed approved of Trump.
While Trump’s standing among female voters improved, his rating among men declined compared to the previous study. Fifty-three percent of male respondents approved of the president earlier in the month compared to 48 percent in the latest poll.
The Republican and Democratic parties also have similar favorability ratings as Trump’s. A Gallup survey conducted Sep. 4-12 of about 1,000 adults, showed Democratic Party was viewed favorably by 44 percent of respondents while the Republican Party was seen favorably by 45 percent.
“We live in a country where no one, more or less no one, is favored by a majority of the country,” Mark Penn, a Democratic pollster who worked closely with former president Bill Clinton, told “What America’s Thinking” host Joe Concha.
As both major parties have struggled to gain the support of a majority of Americans, they have begun to rely on campaign tactics designed to motivate voters against the opposing party, giving rise to a phenomenon that political scientists call “negative partisanship.”
—Matthew Sheffield
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