Your Daily Polling Update for Tuesday, January 29, 2019
TRUMP JOB APPROVAL: AVERAGE 42%
Same as yesterday
RON’S COMMENT: Today’s average is based on ten polls, ranging from 38% (ABC/WaPo) to 45% (Rasmussen). Without these two extremes, it would still be 42%…. President Trump’s disapproval rating averages 55% today, which is 13 points higher than his approval rating.
TRUMP AND THE ECONOMY
Among voters nationwide
What kind of job do you think Trump has done so far on handling the economy – excellent, good, not so good or poor?
Excellent/good: 48%
Not so good/poor: 50%
RON’S COMMENT: 17% of Democrats, 86% of Republicans and 49% of independents rate Trump positively on the economy.
What kind of job do you think Trump has done so far on creating jobs?
Excellent/good: 51%
Not so good/poor: 46%
RON’S COMMENT: When the issue is jobs, and not the economy in the abstract, Trump does a bit better.
What kind of job do you think Trump has done so far helping the middle class?
Excellent/good: 41%
Not so good/poor: 56%
RON’S COMMENT: Trump falls 5 points below his 2016 vote baseline (46%) on helping the middle class. In fact, a majority of Americans give him bad marks on this issue. Expect Democrats to talk a lot about the “middle class” in next year’s election.
STATE OF THE UNION, POST-SHUTDOWN
Among adults nationwide
Would you say the State of the Union is very strong, somewhat strong, not too strong, or not at all strong?
Very strong: 13%
Somewhat strong: 35%
Not too strong: 27%
Not at all strong: 22%
RON’S COMMENT: Americans are split on the state of the union, which is no surprise. 48% say it’s at least somewhat strong and 49% say otherwise. That’s down from a year ago––when 55% said it was strong and 38% said it was not strong. The decline of confidence over the last year cuts across party lines––slipping from 76% to 71% among Republicans, from 52% to 44% among independents and from 42% to 34% among Democrats.
Do you approve or disapprove of Donald Trump’s decision to agree to reopen government for three weeks while a border security deal is being negotiated?
Approve: 81%
Disapprove: 15%
RON’S COMMENT: This is the highest approval Trump has ever received for one of his decisions.
Do you think this decision makes Donald Trump look stronger or weaker as president, or does it have no effect on his image as president?
Stronger: 24%
Weaker: 32%
No effect: 41%
RON’S COMMENT: 44% of Republicans say Trump’s decision makes him look stronger and 19% say it makes him look weaker.
Should a legislative solution on the status of illegal immigrants brought here as children be tied to funding for a border wall or should these two issues be dealt with separately?
Tied: 9%
Deal with separately: 89%
RON’S COMMENT: Americans overwhelmingly want to separate the DACA issue from the wall issue.
BORDER WALL/SHUTDOWN DASHBOARD
Media monitoring from MSL Research
MSL Research monitored the publicly available earned media data around the government shutdown and aggregated the thousands of stories into one interactive dashboard. The dashboard examines overall earned media volume, coverage by popular topics, national, and local secures. The monitoring began on December 17 and continued through January 24.
- Initially, there was a steady but fairly low volume of conversation about the government shutdown through the holidays.
- However, the conversation shot up on January 11, the first day federal employees missed paychecks.
- From there, spikes in conversation became more dramatic and reflect public incidents in the debate between congressional leaders and President Trump.
- Within the federal agencies topic, the TSA was the most frequently discussed.
In some ways, this can be viewed as a “political heat” monitor––the more discussion, the more political heat was placed on the White House and Congress to re-open federal agencies.
To read more, view the dashboard here.
TUESDAY TRIVIA
There are currently five U.S. senators who are older than 80. Name them.
(See answer below)
AS WE MOVE INTO THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN, SEND A FREE SUBSCRIPTION TO FRIENDS AND CLIENTS WHO WOULD ENJOY RECEIVING IT. GO TO LUNCHTIMEPOLITICS.COM AND ENTER THEIR NAMES AND EMAILS.
SOURCES
Presidential job rating average based on recent nationwide polls.
STATE OF THE UNION, POST-SHUTDOWN: Monmouth, Jan. 25-27
TRUMP AND THE ECONOMY: Washington Post/ABC, Jan. 21-24
TRIVIA ANSWER
Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) are 85. Richard Shelby (R-AL) and Jim Inofe (R-OK) are 84. Pat Roberts (R-KS) is 82.
Follow here to get the latest updates on the Lunchtime Politics.
Be the first to comment