Trump approval

The Trib does its poll thing.

In his second month in office, President Donald Trump is getting overwhelmingly good grades on his job performance from the state’s Republicans, according to the latest University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll.

Trump is popular enough to cast positive light on Russian President Vladimir Putin, a world figure who turns out to be markedly more unpopular with Texas Democrats than with Texas Republicans.

Overall, 46 percent of Texans approve of the job Trump been doing and 44 percent disapprove. But Republicans are crazy about him: 81 percent approve of Trump’s work so far, and only 10 percent disapprove. Moreover, 60 percent of Republicans said they “strongly” approve; another 21 percent approve “somewhat” of the president.

“He looks good,” said Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin and co-director of the poll. “Republicans as a group were tentative in their embrace of Donald Trump during the election campaign. They are hugging him now. His favorability rating among Texas Republicans increased 21 points between October and February.”

Likewise, 81 percent of Texas Republicans have a favorable opinion of Trump, while 12 percent have an unfavorable impression of the president.

As you might expect, Texas Democrats fiercely disagree in what amounts to an almost equal but opposite reaction to the Republicans: 83 percent of Texas Democrats disapprove of the job Trump has done as president, 76 percent of them “strongly.” And 85 percent of Democrats said they have an unfavorable opinion of the new chief executive.

“If you’re a Republican, even if you don’t like the guy, well, there’s the Supreme Court and the repudiation of a bunch of smug ideologues [on the left]; this isn’t the worst thing in the world,” said Daron Shaw, co-director of the poll and a professor at UT-Austin. “The reaction of the left — the resistance — probably reinforces that.”

Independents were split almost evenly on both questions in the poll, with 39 percent approving and 36 disapproving of the job Trump is doing; 42 percent saying they have a favorable impression of the president, while 45 percent have an unfavorable one.

Overall, 45 percent of Texans have a favorable impression of Trump and 46 percent have an unfavorable one.

For comparison purposes, here’s a poll from four years ago that included approval numbers for President Obama. While the data isn’t broken down by party affiliation, one can reasonably infer that Republicans were as negative about Obama as Democrats are about Trump, while Democrats were not as intensely positive. Obama was beginning his fifth year as President, so the comparison isn’t exact, but it’s a snapshot in time to consider as we go forward. On the presumably safe assumption that Trump will not do any better among Dems in the future, he needs to maintain his big edge among Republicans or improve among indies (*), lest he risk sliding under water. If we believe, as I do, that this will have an effect on the 2018 elections, this very much bears watching.

(*) – Trump’s national numbers among independents aren’t very good, either. I’m going to guess there’s a correlation here, so keep an eye on that as well.

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5 Responses to Trump approval

  1. Neither Here Nor There says:

    Those Trump supporters are the Soulless of America. They look human but lack souls to guide their actions.

  2. C. L. says:

    @Neither… Really ? Republicans lack a [imaginary] soul, a [imaginary] soul set up to guide their actions ? That’s some Old Testament wrath-like stuff there !

  3. Flypusher says:

    This Indy strongly disapproves.

  4. Bill Daniels says:

    Trump’s had a few growing pains on the job, but over all I’m ecstatic about his performance so far. My favorite part is when he throws out an “alternative fact,” to bait the media. Take Sweden. Sweden has been having a crime/rape wave because of all their Muslim imports, but no one was talking about any of that. Trump creates a fake terror attack, and boom, people start looking at Sweden and they see a crime wave, rapes, and rioting committed by the Muslims that otherwise, no one would be talking about. This tactic is in his book, and still, time after time, he wins, because the MSM continues to take the bait. 4-D chess, indeed.

  5. Neither Here Nor There says:

    C.L. Yes they have no souls. I don’t expect people who don’t believe in a creator to comprehend as they have limited imaginations, spiritually and scientifically.

    Maybe one that is not a believer in a creator will believe science, energy can neither be created nor destroyed. We all have energy something happens to that energy when our bodies die.

    Even Steven Hawkins admits there was a creation, though he does not believe in God. Not as simple as what came first the chicken or the egg, answer; science has shown that the chicken came first.

    By the way Hawkins response as to God being the creator, where the heck was “He” before the creation? That is not a scientific response.

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