Tracking Trump - Direction of the Country for August 25th:
Bottom Line: This Friday feature is designed for political junkies. For years, despite generally favorable approval ratings for President Obama, we'd collectively been unhappy with the overall direction of our country. In the early months of the Trump Presidency we had seen a bit of a shift with a less popular President but a bit more optimistic country generally. At one point earlier this year we were nearly 20% more optimistic than under the Obama administration but that all changed about a month ago...
Here's where we stood on Inauguration Day:
Right Direction: 30%
Wrong Track: 59.1%
Net Negative: -29.1%
Last week:
Right Direction: 29.75%
Wrong Track: 59.75%
Net Negative: 30%
And today:
Right Direction: 25%
Wrong Track: 64%
Net Negative: 39%
Change: -9.9% since Inauguration Day & -9% from a week ago
The polling over the past week fully reflected the fallout from Charlottsville and the results aren't pretty. The country is now the least optimistic it's been since the Trump administration began and we're now even nearly 10% more pessimistic than we were at the end of the Obama era. We're now the most pessimistic we've been since July of 2016 with just 1 in 4 Americans thinking we're heading in the right direction. Last week, before we saw a significant drop in our collective optimism, I'd pondered if the economy performing decently and the record stock market performance would make up for some of the drama and frustration over the lack of healthcare and tax reform to date. It would appear the answer is no at the moment.
Until next week...