Dem
47
GOP
53
Donald Trump's approval rating is going to have a big impact on the midterms, and also on his behavior. So, it's something we keep a close eye on, and it's time for another update. He got some poor numbers this week (and that, of course, is before the Declaration of Grift-dependence).
Let's start with the aggregators, from Trump's best net number to his worst:
| Aggregator | Approve | Disapprove | Net |
| RealClearPolling | 40% | 57% | -17% |
| Ballotpedia | 40% | 58% | -18% |
| DecisionDeskHQ | 40% | 58% | -18% |
| VoteHub | 39% | 59% | -20% |
| The Economist | 36% | 57% | -21% |
| The New York Times | 38% | 59% | -21% |
| Silver Bulletin | 38% | 59% | -21% |
| Race to the WH | 37% | 60% | -23% |
| CNN | 36% | 62% | -26% |
| Average | 38% | 59% | -21% |
The Bush line is 32%, and obviously Trump is not quite there in the aggregations. However, they tend to keep polls in their sample for a very long time, sometimes a year or more (our map algorithm keeps them for 7 days so it responds much faster to news). So, his decline will be slow, assuming it continues. And it is not good news for him that his best number is still "17 points underwater," especially since it comes from RCP, which has been known to deliberately exclude Republican-unfriendly polls from its database.
That's nine aggregators; now let's take a look at the nine most recent individual polls we can find, also listed from Trump's best net number to his worst:
| Pollster | Approve | Disapprove | Net |
| Rasmussen | 43% | 56% | -13% |
| TIPP Insights | 38% | 54% | -16% |
| FocalData | 37% | 55% | -18% |
| AtlasIntel | 40% | 60% | -20% |
| NYT/Siena | 37% | 59% | -22% |
| The Economist/YouGov | 36% | 58% | -22% |
| CBS News | 37% | 63% | -26% |
| Marist | 33% | 60% | -27% |
| Reuters | 31% | 66% | -35% |
| Average | 37% | 59% | -22% |
A much greater spread, as would be expected. That said, these numbers tell us that Trump looks to be slip-sliding a little bit and that, depending on your assumptions, be might already be close to the Bush line. He's probably not, but he could be. Another thing that we learn from this exercise is that Rasmussen still can't be trusted.
There's also some bad news that's not 100% evident from these numbers. To start, that is the highest disapproval he's ever gotten in a CNN poll. He also pulled the lowest approval he's gotten in a New York Times poll since the commencement of Trump v2.0.
But worst of all are the crosstabs. Trump doesn't have that many demographics left where he can bleed substantial support, since he's already lost the lion's share of many of the groups that helped elect him (e.g., Black and Latino men), and he never had many of the groups that hate him (e.g., college grads). One group where HE could bleed support, and he is bleeding support, is non-college white men. Aaron Blake, late of The Washington Post, and now of CNN has a piece observing that, on the whole, Trump's approval rating among noncollege white voters has dropped from 63% at the start of his current term to just 49% now.
These folks are not likely to vote Democratic (well, unless that Democrat is Graham Platner), but they could certainly stay home on Election Day. And if they do—and note, they've done it in the past when Trump was not on the ballot, even when he was much more popular than he is right now—it would be very bad news for the GOP, indeed.
And that is the latest on Trump's approval. We were going to do Political Bytes today, but we really try to keep each day's posting between 4,500 and 7,000 words, and this one is already at 7,200+. So, we'll wait until tomorrow. Here's a preview, though: Kash Patel is still crazy after all these months. (Z)