Political Gravity At Last Is Kicking In

It's gotten to where I don't normally trust the political polls, but good news is good news (via Tara Suter at The Hill):

President Trump’s approval rating has dipped to a historic low with the midterms only about six weeks away, according to a new poll.

In the Reuters/Ipsos poll, Trump’s approval rating was sitting at 32 percent, the lowest of his second term and, according to Reuters, a record low for his entire political life. The fresh approval rating marks a 15-point slide from the 47 percent approval rating he had at the beginning of his second term in the same poll.

I don't think trump has ever polled well with most Americans - I've never seen him go above 50 percent approval, he might have at one point, I just didn't see it - but he's rarely slid under 40 percent during his first term mostly because the Republican voting base never abandoned him. At least until now:

The Reuters/Ipsos poll also pegged Trump’s disapproval rating at 66 percent, up 25 percentage points from the start of his second White House stint...

In a polling average from Decision Desk HQ, Trump’s approval rating was 38.8 percent Monday evening, while his disapproval rating was 59.7 percent.

A recent New York Times/Siena University poll also found Republicans trailing Democrats on the issues of immigration, healthcare and the economy.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll took place Sept. 17-20 among 1,277 people and had 3 percentage points as its margin of error.

You might notice this poll happened after trump's midterms convention stunt, designed to get his approval numbers bouncing back, because rallies are his thing babe.

But his numbers are finally - FINALLY - declining among the Republican base he's trying to rally. That Reuters/Ipsos poll found that his approval among Republicans fell from 82 percent to 73 percent.

I've noted before way back in 2017 that as long as the party base - the ones who would defend their brand (tm), their standard bearer, their demagogue - remains favorable, the polls are going to skew in trump's favor more than they should. What I wrote then:

Notice the polarized numbers between the three factions of Democrats to Independents to Republicans. Of course the Republicans disapproved of the Democrats - harshly so after 1992 when the partisanship started its avalanche - for Clinton and Obama, and of course the Democrats disapproved of the Republicans from Reagan onward, and while they approved their own guys with high marks. That's not surprising...

But that's unimportant for this argument. What matters is that 87 percent approval Republicans have for Trump.

As long as Trump has that much support among the party base, there is not a damn thing the Republicans in Congress or in the Establishment can do to toss him overboard...

The polarization of polling numbers is a given: Democrats are going to favor Democratic leaders and Republicans will favor Republicans. It's a question of how skewed it gets, and staying within statistical norms. There's always going to be a fraction of party voters who don't approve, but they'll always be a significant sliver - usually around 8 to 10 percent - often made up of people angry their guy isn't partisan enough.

For trump to slide from that comfort zone of 85 percent or so of Republican voters - that he's at 73 percent and sinking - suggests that a growing faction of the regular base of the party are souring on him (and the rest of the GOP). trump and his party allies can afford to lose 10 percent of their base: they can't afford to lose 25 percent, especially as the midterms is about a month away.

All of the political issues - above all the economy, something that most voters trusted them with since the 1970s - that had been winners for the Republicans aren't in their favor now, and there's nothing trump is doing that looks to change those trends. trump's not about to give up his tariffs wars that most Americans hate, trump can't solve this mess he made in Iran and the Middle East, and trump won't admit there's a problem with inflation. 

The question now is: How does this translate into actual votes this November 2026? The answer depends on A) every Democratic voter showing up to vote Democratic, B) every Independent voter showing up and flipping votes Democratic, and C) if the Republicans pissed at trump decide to either stay home (likely) or flip Democratic (which is honestly hard to do: voting against your brand (tm) is like tearing off your own arm).

Here's hoping the answer is with massive Blue Waves sweeping into both the House and Senate seats, and enough state governments electing Democrats as Governors and State Attorney Generals to hold trump and his cronies accountable.

Elections matter. Make this unpopular trump suffer at the polls, America. Prove to him he's crashing to the ground at long last.