Member-only story
What really moves Trump’s job approval?
Kent R. Kroeger (January 27, 2019)
President Donald Trump’s approval rating has entered some dangerous territory if his intention is to get re-elected in 2020.
Since mid-December, near the start of the government shutdown over border wall funding, to today, his average approval rating has witnessed its worst four-week period of decline since the start of his presidency.
Trump’s disapproval number has jumped over four percentage points in just over four weeks (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: Trump presidential job approval
In isolation, this decline would be surmountable. Presidents in the past have experienced similar declines and still won re-election, but what makes Trump’s fall problematic is the low variance in job approval he’s experienced since taking office. In a previous article, I demonstrated the relationship between our country’s growing hyper-partisanship and decreasing variance in presidential job approval. Figure 2 is a graph of this relationship from that article:
Figure 2: Trust in Media and the Variance in Presidential Job Approval
