Trump’s Approval Rating Falls Among White Voters

The following article by Tim Marcin with Newsweek was posted on the National Memo website May 11, 2017:

Photo Credit: FlickR/Gage Skidmore

It’s no secret President Donald Trump isn’t popular with the majority of Americans, but a new poll this week shows he is beginning to lose some of the demographics that thrust him into the White House.

The Quinnipiac University survey found that just 36 percent of voters approve of the job Trump is doing, while 58 percent disapprove. That’s a “near-record” negative rating and a drop from last month, the poll noted. In its April 19 poll, Quinnipiac University found Trump’s approval rating stood at 40 percent with 56 percent disapproving.

Perhaps even more troubling for the president: The folks who made up his base in November’s election appear to be growing weary. White voters are fleeing.

Forty-seven percent of white voters with no college degree approved of Trump’s job performance, while 46 percent disapproved, the survey found. That’s a steep drop in support from last month, when 57 percent approved of Trump, and compare that to exit polls in November that found 67 percent of non-college-educated whites voted for Trump, the highest such figure for any candidate since 1980.

Just 48 percent of white men approved of Trump’s job performance, while 46 percent disapproved in the latest Quinnipiac survey. In its April 19 poll, a majority of white men, 53 percent, approved of the president and 38 percent disapproved. Exit polls found 62 percent of white men voted for Trump in November.

Most independent voters already didn’t approve of Trump, but his support among that subgroup dropped as well. Just 29 percent approved of the president in Quinnipiac’s latest poll, down from 38 percent last month. But exit polls in November found Trump won among independent voters, with 46 percent support compared to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s 42 percent.

In the latest survey, 61 percent of voters expressed the sentiment that Trump is dishonest, while 59 percent said they thought he didn’t care about the average American and 66 percent thought he wasn’t level-headed.

“There is no way to spin or sugarcoat these sagging numbers,” said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll, in a statement. “The erosion of white men, white voters without college degrees and independent voters, the declaration by voters that President Donald Trump’s first 100 days were mainly a failure and deepening concerns about Trump’s honesty, intelligence and level headedness are red flags that the administration simply can’t brush away.”

The Quinnipiac survey polled 1,078 voters over the phone from May 4 through May 9. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.

Trump’s approval rating has mostly hovered around 40 percent recently—the weighted average from data-focused website FiveThirtyEight had him at 41.3 percent Thursday—but his support has seemingly taken a dip in the wake of Republicans in the House of Representatives passing the American Health Care Act, otherwise known as Trumpcare. A Morning Consult/Politico survey released Wednesday found the president’s approval rating dipped four percentage points, to 44 percent, after the passage of the bill, which just 38 percent of respondents supported.

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