Covid-19 is taking its toll on Donald Trump’s popularity
New polls show severe cracks in the president's base
Donald Trump has now been delivering his nightly coronavirus briefings for over a month. They don’t appear to be helping. Despite being chock-full of inaccuracies that can improperly guide relief efforts, the public also doesn’t seem to be taking to them. At the same time, Trump has signaled support for protestors who don’t like the lockdowns and want to go out and get haircuts.
My response to them? Cutting your own hair isn’t that hard. I’ve been doing it since I was 17. Just buy some Wahl clippers and you’ll be on your way.
Anyway, a number of new polls have foreshadowed severe consequences for Trump’s mishandling of the outbreak of covid-19. I wanted to quickly summarize their findings for you here. There’s a lot to take stock of, so I’ve opted for a bulleted list of recent data:
Navigator poll: Trump’s net approval for handling health care is down to -16 among registered voters, his lowest number in a while. As recently as March 23rd, he was only 2 points underwater.
The same poll found that Trump’s calls to “LIBERATE” states across the Midwest and Virginia last week are dramatically unpopular. 13% of registered voters support the protests, while 76% of them “support the governors who put in place the stay-at-home orders”. This makes a lot of sense to me. Most people are fine staying home if it means fewer people will die (the Navigator survey supports this, too).
Pew Research Center: “Most Americans Say Trump Was Too Slow in Initial Response to Coronavirus Threat”. A Pew poll shows that 65% of adults believe Trump didn’t act quickly enough in the early stages of the outbreak. 73% believe the worst of the diseases and its impacts on our society, economy are still to come.
That’s exceedingly bad news for the president, especially after you consider that his popularity is already dipping. Trump’s approval rating according to FiveThirtyEight is just about back where it was before all the quarantining shutdowns began.
All this news has evidently impacted the president’s re-election numbers too. A poll published by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal this week found Biden up 7 over Trump points nationally. That would certainly be enough to win the electoral college if it actually happens in November.
State-level polls have also been bad for the president. Polls out today from Ipsos found Biden up 3 in Wisconsin, 6 in Pennsylvania and 8 in Michigan. The Fox News poll (which isn’t ideologically biased like the news outlet) found Biden up by 8 in both PA and MI. A poll from Quinnipiac University found Biden up by 4 in Floria, which makes sense if he really is up by 6-8 points in the Midwest. And four new polls from Public Policy Polling found Trump down 3-7 points in all of Wisconsin, North Carolina, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
All this marks a poor start to the general election campaign for Donald Trump. He is down by more nationally and in key states than he was versus Hillary Clinton for most of the 2016 campaign. Of course, that could change. But the trajectory doesn’t look good—neither for Trump, nor frankly, for Americans, who desperately need sensible economic and public health policy right now. My best guess is that if they don’t get it, they’ll probably elect a new president in November.