CNN Politics: 'History says Trump's low approval rating is unlikely to move'

FiveThirtyEight.com link

Mod: Think about it. What could Trump do to get his campaign back on its feet? Hold MAGA rallies in various local Covid Domes? Board GOP convention delegates on the SS Coronavirus? In Florida? I just don't see it.

History says Trump's low approval rating is unlikely to move (CNN Politics link): A new Gallup poll finds that 39% of Americans approve of the job Donald Trump is doing as president, while 57% disapprove.

That poll is in line with the average poll that shows Trump's approval rating is in the low 40s among all adults as well as voters specifically.

What's the point: We've still got five months until the general election, which, in theory, is plenty of time for the race for president to change. Indeed, horserace polling has sometimes shifted considerably between this point and Election Day.

Presidential approval ratings, however, haven't historically moved much from June of an election year to Election Day.

It seems quite likely at this point that Trump's approval rating is going to be south of 50% and his net approval rating (approval - disapproval) to be negative when people vote. That should be deeply troubling to Trump, given the strong link between approval ratings and reelection chances.

There have been 13 presidents who have run for another term in the polling era (since 1940). For each of those presidents, I compared their average Gallup (or, in the case of 1944, the Office of Public Opinion Research) June approval rating and their estimated approval rating on Election Day.

The average president has seen his approval rating shift by just 3 points from now until the election. That would only get Trump into the mid 40s at best. Trump's approval rating was similar during the 2018 midterms, when his party lost control of the House.

Net approval ratings tell the same story. The average president had his net approval rating shift by only 6 points from this point forward. Given Trump's net approval rating is in the negative low to mid-teens, a 6-point improvement would land him with a net approval around -7 to -10 points on Election Day. Again, that's about where he was during the 2018 midterms.

Remember that Trump's approval rating has been steadier than any president before him. There's no particularly strong reason to think he'll get a larger than average boost in his approval rating and therefore his reelection chances.

Mod: Plenty more at the link.

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