Tracking Trump - Direction of the Country for September 29th:
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'd 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 two months ago...
Here's where we stood on Inauguration Day:
Right Direction: 30%
Wrong Track: 59.1%
Net Negative: -29.1%
September 22nd:
Right Direction: 29.3%
Wrong Track: 60.3%
Net Negative: -31%
And today:
Right Direction: 27.3%
Wrong Track: 62%
Net Negative: -34.7%
Change: -5.6% since Inauguration Day & -3.7% from last week
Much like the President's approval rating we saw a dip on our collective optimism this week (and it's already been pretty darn low). The two biggest reasons are likely the failure of healthcare reform to pass once again (the most important issue to voters on Inauguration Day) and the NFL controversy which has caused a great deal of upset with those who've sacrificed for the freedoms that are being abused by the NFL players protesting and the lack of action being taken by the league/owners.
The potential silver lining looking forward would be the passage of tax reform. We shall see.
Until next week...