Polls Show Trump Is Bleeding Support During Shutdown

By Julia Arciga, The Daily Beast

24 January 19

Three major polls, released Wednesday, all indicate the president’s shutdown is damaging his already historically low approval ratings.

resident Trump can’t seem to get anything his way: The month-long government shutdown has yet to yield his desired border wall; his second State of the Union address was cancelled by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi; and now, three major polls found that his approval ratings have taken a serious dip.

A Politico-Morning Consult poll, released Wednesday, showed the president now has a 40-percent approval rating—a 17-point dip from last polling.

Two other major polls, from CBS News and Associated Press-NORC, found that Trump now has a 36- and 34-percent approval rating, respectively. AP’s new data marks an eight percent drop from last month, while CBS’ figures represent a three-point dip.

According to the AP’s figures, this latest approval rating is the lowest in Trump’s two-year presidency.

Much of the disapproval stems from the partial government shutdown, which will enter its thirty-third day on Thursday. According to the AP poll, a whopping 60 percent of Americans said Trump “bears a great deal of responsibility” for the shutdown, and 36 percent blame congressional Republicans. Only 31 percent of those polled thought Democrats were to blame.

Similarly, Politico’s numbers found that 54 percent blamed Trump and congressional Republicans for the shutdown, while only 34 percent blamed the Democrats. The D.C. outlet’s pollsters found that those numbers have “remained fairly stable since the shutdown began.”

While a partisan dispute—like the one focused on the the State of the Union address—might fly under the radar on the national level, the shutdown has impacted the everyday lives of many Americans.

According to CNBC, the shutdown has affected about 800,000 federal employees, with approximately 380,000 being furloughed and 420,000 being forced to work without pay. Many have turned to side jobs like Uber driving, substitute teaching, or babysitting to make ends meet. The New York Times reported that more than two thousand federal employees have turned to the crowdfunding site GoFundMe to seek financial relief.

As such, 55 percent of Americans said they were “concerned” about the shutdown, and 51 percent said it is a “major problem,” according to Politico and AP’s numbers.

“The large part of the responsibility belongs to the president because he made the decision,” AP poll respondent and self-identified Republican Sandra Olson, of Northwood, Iowa, said. “We have never in my lifetime seen a president who has been so maligned and attacked and vilified.”

The president’s performance numbers have particularly suffered among self-identified independent voters, who registered a 71-percent disapproval rating, according to AP’s poll. That figure, the AP noted, also sits “among its lowest points” of Trump’s presidency. Politico’s poll similarly found a 60-percent disapproval rate among independent voters.

Trump’s support within his party has remained relatively unscathed, however. Both Politico and AP’s numbers found that roughly 80 percent of Republicans approve of Trump’s performance.