POLLS? TRUMP IS IN A BETTER PLACE THAN DEMOCRATS, WHO ARE FIGHTING EACH OTHER OVER HOW TO FIGHT HIM. There are a lot of questions these days about poll numbers, both President Donald Trump’s and those of his Democratic opponents. First, job approval. The president’s rating has tipped slightly underwater, by 0.4%, in the RealClearPolitics average of polls. But what is striking about Trump polls is the wide variation in approval between the different polls. The current RealClearPolitics average contains a Quinnipiac poll from March 10 that showed Trump 11 points underwater. It also contains an RMG Research poll from March 13 that showed Trump 10 points above the water. A 21-point spread is a pretty broad range. Better to look at the average.
What can be said with some certainty is that the president’s polls have dipped a bit — a month ago, on Feb. 16, he was almost 3 points above the water. So, he has trended downward for a while, which is better than his first term, when he was more than 5 points underwater in the RealClearPolitics average by this time.
One striking number that goes along with presidential job approval is the measure of whether the public thinks the country is headed in the right direction or the wrong direction. The first thing to remember about it is that most people, most of the time, think the country is headed in the wrong direction. It’s just a regular feature of opinion polling. That said, the beginning of the second Trump administration is looking reasonably good for the president.
In the RealClearPolitics average on the direction of the country, 42.6% say right direction, while 51.1% say wrong direction. That is historically quite good. The percentage of voters who said the country was headed in the wrong direction stayed in the 60s for most of Joe Biden’s presidency, except for the period when inflation was at its worst and the wrong direction number nearly hit 75%. The percentage of people who said the country was headed in the right direction was usually in the 20s.
So, a right-direction number in the 40s is good. When a recent NBC poll showed 44% of respondents saying the country is headed in the right direction — it was 27% last November — MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki said, “If that doesn’t seem like a lot, the last time it cracked 40%, you’ve got to go back to 2012. The last time it actually hit 44% or higher was January 2004.” Yes, Kornacki noted, a lot of the increase is Republicans, but the percentage of independents who say the country is headed in the right direction has gone up 7 points since Trump won the presidential election.
So, that is the Republican side. Whatever you read about people freaking out because Trump did this or said that — the numbers at the moment are fairly solid. But the story is very different on the Democratic side. You can tell it in one headline: “CNN Poll: Democratic Party’s favorability drops to a record low.” The new CNN survey found that just 29% of Americans have a favorable impression of the Democratic Party, while 54% had an unfavorable impression. (For comparison’s sake, the Republican Party’s numbers are 36% favorable and 48% unfavorable.)
Right around the time of Biden’s inauguration in 2021, the Democratic Party’s favorable number was 49%. The fall from 49% to 29% is pretty much the tale of the Democratic Party in the last four years. Still, you can’t really compare the polls of one person, Trump, and the whole opposition party. And there’s no one-on-one polling to be done because no Democrat has the status to equal the president of the United States. Indeed, when a political party is out of power in Washington — it does not control the White House, the House, or the Senate — it has no leader. This or that party official can go on the talk shows, but that doesn’t make him the leader. And right now, Democrats have nobody.
Charles Schumer certainly isn’t that leader. So many Democrats are so mad at the Senate minority leader for acknowledging reality recently — by choosing not to shut down the government in a spending fight Democrats were sure to lose — that they have been protesting outside his house in Brooklyn. Then, Schumer heard that many more were planning to protest planned appearances in Atlanta, Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York, where he hoped to promote his new book, Antisemitism in America: A Warning. He’s now called off the tour — a top Democrat hiding from his party.
So, whatever the president’s troubles, he’s far better off than his political opponents. While Trump moves ahead, Democrats are now fighting each other over how to fight him.