The popular-vote loser is a supremely unlikeable person. Sure, he snuck into the White House thanks to an antiquated electoral system designed to protect the interests of slaveholders, but he didn’t get off to a rousing start. He got no honeymoon period. And somehow, he’s finding new depths of unpopularity to explore, with Pew clocking his favorabilities at 39-56. Of those, 46 percent disapprove “strongly,” which is higher than anything President Barack Obama saw, ever.
Now, lest anyone think that Trump is an anomaly, and not really representative of the GOP (an argument we’ll hear more and more in the months and years ahead), there’s this, “84 percent of Republicans and Republican leaners approve of the way he is handling his job as president.” He’s unambiguously their president.
Now it’s clear that there’s a dramatic racial divide in our nation’s politics, but there’s a dramatic difference among whites based on whether they have a college degree or not:
|
Approve |
Disapprove |
White |
51 |
48 |
Black |
12 |
80 |
Hispanic |
25 |
72 |
White, College |
38 |
61 |
White, non-college |
57 |
41 |
And that white, non-college-educated cohort is Trump’s firewall. He’ll bleed support among all those other groups, but there’s relatively not much room to drop. So if he’s going to end up in the low 30s or even high 20s, very possible within six months, it’ll be because non-college whites start abandoning him. And if Trump loses those guys, there’s nothing else propping up the GOP. And 2018 will be a political bloodbath.