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If you're downright sick of the media narrative that no matter how ignorant and incompetent Donald Trump proves to be, his true believers just won't abandon him—here's some polling data to delight in taken from a grab bag of outlets.
At Bloomberg, Jonathan Bernstein writes that Trump has once again edged out every other modern-American president for last place in approval ratings at this juncture of their presidency. But it's Trump’s dismal net approval ratings where he really outpaces the competition.
His "net" approval (subtracting disapproval) has been the worst among those 13 presidents every day of his presidency, and it's never been particularly close. Currently he's within a single percentage point of same-day Gerald Ford in approval, but at -18.3, his net approval is 9 percentage points worse than Ford's, and every other president was in positive territory at this point.
Trump is not only dead last in net approval ratings, he's managed to do it at a time of relative peace and prosperity—the two factors that tend to serve as a drag on a president's approval.
To get this unpopular, this fast, and to do it in an era of relatively good times, is just breathtaking. [...] I've seen people claim he's winning his fight against the NFL, for example, but the numbers certainly don't suggest that's the case. [...] In fact, Harry Enten at FiveThirtyEight estimates that Trump's net approval is a whopping 30 percentage points below where the economy suggests it should be. [...]
And yes, I think as a whole Trump's unpopularity has been massively underplayed in the media throughout his administration so far.
Now isn't that refreshing.
Trump’s net approval rating among rural voters has fallen from +16 percentage points to zero since the beginning of his presidency, according to Ipsos polling.
In September, 47 percent of people in non-metro areas approved of Trump while 47 percent disapproved. That is down from Trump’s first four weeks in office, when 55 percent said they approved of the president while 39 percent disapproved.
Additionally, Morning Consult found that Trump’s approval rating has fallen in all 50 states since the beginning of his presidency.
According to the poll, a majority of voters in 25 states said in September they disapproved of Trump's job performance.
Some of those states include those Trump carried during the 2016 election, such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa and Pennsylvania.
Fifty-one percent of voters in Nevada and Arizona also disapproved of Trump's job performance.
And here’s the 538 graph showing that Trump’s really in a class by himself (way down there at the bottom) when it comes his approval ratings relative to the economy.
So the next time you hear some journalist say that Trump’s approval ratings among Republicans just won’t budge—forget about it. Despite what you’ve been told, the popular vote loser’s approval ratings are strictly bottom of the barrel and he continues to gain detractors.