Tracking Trump - The President's approval 4-7-17:
Bottom Line: For the political junkies that missed the Friday political series...We're back with weekly tracking. In this series we'll track the high point, low point and current ratings and week over week comparisons. So let's get started.
Trump's lowest ratings: 40.4% approval and 52.8% disapprove: -12.3% (4/7/17)
Trump highest approval ratings were an average 45.2% approval and 43% disapproval +2.2% (1/27/17)
Trump's current ratings: 40.4% approval and 52.8% disapprove: -12.3%
So the President has hit a new low for his Presidency this week but I'm going to make a call at the end of this story so stand by. The drop this week was slight, -.1%, over this time last week. It's clear that the fallout from the failure to advance a healthcare bill took it's toll on the President.
There is still a lot of variance between pollsters, though not as extreme as some of what we'd seen previously (at the peak there was a 27% disparity between accredited pollsters). The range this week is the Reuters/Ipsos -4% to IBD/TIPP -22%. The hype in the media continues to be exceedingly negative with regard to anything dealing with the President himself and this week has been filled with a lot of coverage of the President's weak approval polling. At the onset I mentioned I'd make a call and here it is...I believe that this has the potential to be a low point in President Trump's approval rating for the foreseeable. Why? I believe that there are three factors that are culminating at about the same time.
First, the media's daily whack-a-Trump effort has a shelf life before some grow tired of the daily beatings the President has taken by virtue of a media that's more interested in political objectives than objective coverage.
Second, the unforced error that was the original healthcare bill is fully factored into these numbers and provided that the President and Republicans in Congress have learned from this experience - there's upside in future legislative efforts.
Third, polling on Neil Gorsuch has averaged 58% approval for his nomination. With Democrats having taken a hard line that's not publicly popular and the President obtaining his first major win (and arguably most meaningful win possible) - I think it's highly possible if not likely - that he'll begin to see upside to his numbers next week.
*The new wildcard is how people view the Syrian airstrike - I have no real read on how that will generally be viewed.