Voters value competence. That could be bad news for Trump.
By Jane Green and Will Jennings September 1 at 6:00 AM
When President Trump’s approval rating hit 34 percent in a recent Gallup poll, it marked just the latest in a series of negative public assessments of his performance in office. According to FiveThirtyEight’s polling average, the president’s approval is near its lowest level since he took office.
But Trump’s falling poll numbers aren’t limited to his overall job rating. According to a series of surveys conducted by YouGov since January, the public has also grown increasingly disenchanted with his handling of a particular set of issues. In the chart below, we show the percentage of Americans approving of Trump’s handling of abortion, civil rights, health care, immigration, the economy and veterans. The question was, “Do you approve or disapprove of the way Donald Trump is handling these specific issues?” The trends are presented dividing up the data for Republican identifiers, Democratic identifiers and independents.
Approval of President Trump’s handling of six issues, January — August 2017. Source: Economist/YouGov polls. Graph by the authors.
On each, Trump’s approval has declined. While his support among Democrats slightly increased (albeit from a very low base) on the economy and veterans, the biggest change on each issue — for the worse — has been among Republicans. Health care has been the biggest loser, where GOP approval of Trump’s ability to handle the issue fell from 81 percent in January to 65 percent in August.
Interestingly, we found that Trump’s approval has barely shifted on 11 other issues, including terrorism, gun control and education. Opinion has changed on the most visible issues of Trump’s presidency, which suggests that the public is reacting to the administration’s handling of specific policies. But the point is that Trump’s fellow partisans — the people we might expect to stick with him — have become more critical of the way he’s handled several key policy issues.
Parties can lose support when voters question their competence
more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/09/01/even-republicans-are-starting-to-doubt-trumps-competence/?utm_term=.3f7438ee5095&wpisrc=nl_politics&wpmm=1
= new reply since forum marked as read
