By Chris Stirewalt | Friday, May 1
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By Chris Stirewalt
Friday, May 1
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© Alex Brandon, Associated Press
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Trump is in the dumps, but Dems still sweating
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[Watch Whole Hog Politics live: Join us today at 9 am ET at TheHill.com as Chris Stirewalt and host Bill Sammon break down this week’s political news and answer questions from a live online audience.]
President Trump has never been this unpopular. And it’s not even close.
His two lowest points from his first term took his average job approval below 40 percent for a net score of -17.8 points after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack and his previous all-time low of -18.4 points in the chaotic autumn of 2017.
The president is now consistently under 40 percent approval, with sky-high disapproval. His net score this week is -25.4 points. For context, that’s substantially worse than former President Biden at his low point of -19.8 in the weeks after his disastrous presidential debate with Trump when Biden’s own party was forcing him out of the race.
To find lower numbers than Trump’s, you’d have to go all the way back to the fall of 2008 when former President George W. Bush was getting blamed by most voters for the financial panic and by Republicans for the bailouts aimed at ending it. Which is all to say that the old premise about Trump having “a low ceiling but a high floor” doesn’t hold anymore.
We don’t really need to ask why. Inflation is up, gas prices are way up, and Americans are extremely concerned about the cost of healthcare. The Iran war is stalemated. Immigration enforcement remains a black eye for the administration. Washington fairly oozes with insider dealing as the regular business of government can barely get done. Cabinet members keep getting bounced amid scandals. The president, meanwhile, is obsessed with vanity projects, particularly settling scores against old foes and, always, his ballroom — which Republicans are now asking taxpayers to fund.
If it wasn’t for the 79 percent of Republicans still sticking with him, Trump would be looking at the 20s for sure. Fewer than a quarter of independent voters now approve of the way the president is handling the job. You’d say this is the bottom, but that supposes that, like 2017, Trump is willing to reverse course.
A new report in The Atlantic suggests that Trump has moved beyond the mundane concerns of political popularity and has entered the Hegelian plane of history. “He is unburdened by political concerns,” one administration official said, “and is able to do what is truly right rather than what is in his best political interests.”
Hooooo boy.
If you’re a Republican fighting for her or his life to hang on in this midterm year, the last thing you want to hear about is an “unburdened” Donald Trump. You want that man burdened like a mule, agonizing over how a skeptical voting public will react to every choice. If the president has already reached the “history will be my judge” phase of things, what hope is there of getting him to calm down and help Republicans start minimizing losses? Given the iron correlation between presidential job approval and losses for the party in power, things are getting daggone desperate.
Republicans may be able to gerrymander their way into, say, seven more House seats. But in the time since that effort began with the Texas Legislature last summer, Trump has dropped more than 15 points in his net approval rating. That’s not principally why he dropped, but one has to imagine that Trump’s decline has wiped out a lot more seats than Republicans have drawn themselves into over the same period.
And yet, Democrats are nervous.
If Trump is about as popular as fur-lined Speedos, why are Democrats only up a little less than 6 points in an average of recent generic ballot polls? Why do the same polls that show Trump 20 points underwater show Democrats with just a 3-point advantage on which party voters prefer to control Congress after this fall’s elections?
Republicans and anxious Democrats will quickly point out that as unpopular as Trump and his party have become, the Democratic Party is even worse off, with a favorability rating below 30 percent.
Progressive Democrats will tell you that this is because the party is not progressive enough. Moderate Democrats will tell you that this is because the party is not moderate enough. They are both, in different ways, probably right. But that’s all just mostly retrofitting ideological arguments for whatever political predicament or opportunity happens to be at hand.
But those complaints do speak to the actual problem: Democrats themselves are unhappy with their own party. That same CNN poll that showed Democrats sucking wind on favorability showed that voters who disliked both parties were overwhelmingly tilting toward Democrats this year. The Democratic holdouts who might right now be saying that they want their party to move left or to the center may grouse now, but they will show up in droves to vote against Republicans for almost any Democrat, from socialist to squish.
At this point eight years ago, Democrats led in an average of generic ballot polls by 6.4 points. That’s better than the current 5.8 points, sure, but not by much. In November 2018, Democrats beat Republicans in the cumulative national House vote by 8.4 points — enough to win 235 seats. If Democrats replicated that performance, it would be a 15-seat swing from 2024 and a majority large enough to withstand considerable defections.
The number might be lower with gerrymandering or it might be higher if Trump really is in his YOLO era, but it’s hard to see where Democrats are today as anything but in the drivers’ seat.
Democrats want to be soothed by the kind of double-digit polling leads that gave them false hopes in past elections, but the reality is that their core voters remain frustrated with the party and swing voters have yet to really engage with an unappetizing midterm campaign.
Their best bet remains to let Trump do the work for them.
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[Programming alert: Watch "The Hill Sunday with Chris Stirewalt" — Congress is sputtering to a halt yet again and with big questions on Iran and the economy still looming. We’ll hear from decisionmakers in both parties. And, we’ve got it all on redistricting with Sean Trende, one of the architects of Virginia’s existing congressional map and a leading expert on the subject. Plus, Thomas Chatterton Williams on the new radical chic for excusing crime and political violence. And, as always, we’ll be joined by our best-in-the business panel of journalists, including Bill Sammon of The Hill, Robert Draper of The New York Times and Laura Weiss of Punchbowl News. Be sure to catch us on NewsNation at 10 a.m. ET / 9 a.m. CT or your local CW station.]
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Change from last week: ↓0.8 points (-24.6 points)
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Change from one month ago: ↓ 2.8 points (-22.6 points)
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[Average includes: Reuters/Ipsos 34 percent approve - 64 percent disapprove; Emerson College 40 percent approve - 56 percent disapprove; AP/NORC 33 percent approve - 67 percent disapprove; American Research Group 32 percent approve - 63 percent disapprove; Fox News 42 percent approve - 58 percent disapprove]
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ECONOMIC PESSIMISM INTENSIFES
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Right now, do you think that your financial situation as a whole is getting better or getting worse?
April 2024 | Now
Better: 43 percent | 34 percent
Worse: 47 percent | 55 percent
The same: 9 percent | 9 percent
[Gallup surveys of U.S. adults]
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The Wall Street Journal: “San Francisco is not only on the rebound, she is in love. His name is Chonkers. He is a 2,000-pound Steller sea lion who swam up to a dock on Pier 39 a month ago and has decided to stay. The city noticed immediately. Chonkers is about three times the size of the California sea lions that typically inhabit the San Francisco Bay, and when he crashes his mighty frame down on the dock he’s chosen to sleep on, it sounds like an oak tree falling down. … Chonkers’s great leap briefly squashed the side of the structure down to the level of the water. ‘We didn’t build those floats for 2,000-pound animals,’ said Sheila Chandor, harbormaster for the Pier 39 marina. Steller sea lions will occasionally pop up at Pier 39 for a few days, but Chonkers has been here for weeks now, she said. ‘We’re a pit stop, that’s how we saw ourselves.’ … Chonkers isn’t the first sea lion to capture the heart of San Francisco. In the late 19th century another Steller, called Big Ben Butler, became a local celebrity.”
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Supreme Court decision could swing seven House seats toward GOP: The Hill: “Two nonpartisan election handicappers identified seven districts that could be at risk of being redrawn to favor Republicans following the Supreme Court’s Wednesday decision limiting the scope of the Voting Rights Act provision that creates majority-minority districts. Both Cook Political Report and Sabato’s Crystal Ball, which is published by the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, said the court’s ruling — which deemed Louisiana’s current map an illegal racial gerrymander and ordered it be redrawn — could ultimately jeopardize all of the Democratic seats in Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee and South Carolina. … The handicappers identified the same seven districts that could be at risk.”
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Florida GOP passes map aimed at adding four seats to Republican column: The Washington Post: “Florida lawmakers approved a new congressional map Wednesday that would give Republicans a leg up in four more House seats, boosting their chances of keeping control of the chamber amid a nationwide redistricting arms race. Republicans who control the legislature adopted the plan two days after Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) presented it to them — and just hours after the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision curtailing the Voting Rights Act and giving states more leeway to draw districts for partisan advantage. Court challenges are expected.”
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Louisiana to scrub May 14 primary as GOP looks to gain a seat: NBC News: Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry plans to push back his state's May 16 primary to give state lawmakers time to redraw congressional maps there, after the Supreme Court struck down the current district lines in a decision with far-reaching consequences for control of Congress in 2026 and beyond. … Absentee voting for the May 16 primary is already underway in Louisiana, and early voting is set to start this weekend. It's likely any move to halt voting could face legal scrutiny. But Republicans are confident they'll be able to press pause on the process because the Supreme Court's ruling directly labeled Louisiana's congressional lines an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.”
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Dems’ Virginia gerrymander in limbo ahead of state high court hearings: WWBT: “Virginia’s Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s ruling to block the certification of last week’s voter referendum on redistricting. The ruling is a win for Virginia Republicans, but it may not be the final decision in the ongoing gerrymandering battle. … This means the state cannot certify the election results on Friday as scheduled. The Attorney General’s office said the court will hear arguments on the case, though no date has been set. … The state Board of Elections has 14 days to certify the results under state law. The state wanted to certify the statewide vote on Friday, but has until next Tuesday.”
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Anti-gerrymandering measures come back to bite Dems: The New York Times: “[Democrats] began a major push for independent commissions to draw congressional districts after President Trump and Republicans swept into power in 2017. Democrats, panicked about Republicans’ structural gains after the 2010 census, succeeded in enacting such commissions in Colorado, Michigan and Virginia, while Republicans mostly kept politically minded state legislators in charge of drawing maps in red states. ... the independent commissions that Democrats pushed for eight years ago, along with ones in Washington State and California that predated Mr. Trump’s rise, have complicated the party’s redistricting fight.”
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Dems will face a choice between racial equity and electoral advantage: MS NOW: “But as bad as the redistricting prospects are for minority voters in Republican-run states after Louisiana v. Callais — and they are very bad — it’s worth considering how Democratic-run states too will have an incentive to dismantle some of these districts. The battle over whether to maximize the number of Democratic seats or provide effective minority representation in Congress and other legislative bodies could threaten the Democratic Party’s internal cohesion and long-term prospects.”
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Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) suspends Senate campaign, setting up Graham Platner for general election showdown with Republican Sen. Susan Collins — The Washington Post
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Poll: James Talarico leads both John Cornyn and Ken Paxton — The Hill
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Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Mallory McMorrow purges social media after posts disparaging the state discovered — New York Post
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Poll shows Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) retaking Senate primary lead as McMorrow, Abdul El-Sayed split progressive voters — Deadline Detroit
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Sen. Bill Cassidy running third in Louisiana’s Republican Senate primary, poll says — The Hill
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Big GOP super PAC warns Republicans that the Senate is at risk, blames muddled message on affordability — Politico
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Xavier Becerra, former state attorney general, emerges as front-runner for California governor, and gets the abuse to match on the debate stage — The New York Times
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Study shows big-spending, self-funding candidates seldom succeed — NOTUS
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Thomas Massie proving hard to beat in high-priced, Trump-fueled primary — Politico
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Internal GOP polls show dire numbers in 2024 Trump districts — Punchbowl News
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South Carolina’s Mark Sanford abandons bid to reclaim House seat — The Hill
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Poll shows little support for Trump’s ballroom, 250-foot arch or name on currency — The Washington Post
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THEN THEY WOULDN’T BE NOMINEES ANYMORE
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“What would be wrong if they said Biden won?” — Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) overheard asking aides during Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings for Trump judicial nominees who repeatedly refused to answer Democrats' questions about the 2020 election
“On this occasion, I cannot help noticing the readjustments to the East Wing, Mr. President, following your visit to Windsor Castle last year. And I'm sorry to say that we British, of course, made our own small attempt at real estate redevelopment of the White House in 1814.” — King Charles III quipping at the state dinner in his honor about British troops burning the White House during the War of 1812
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Write to WholeHogPolitics@TheHill.com with your tips, kudos, criticisms, insights, rediscovered words, recipes, and, always, good jokes.
Please include your real name — first and last — and hometown. Make sure to let us know if you want to keep your submission private.
My colleague, Meera Sehgal, and I will look for your emails and then share the most interesting ones and my responses here. Clickety clack!
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WRC-TV: “A bizarre set of circumstances led to a 14-year-old girl firing an off-duty police officer’s gun inside a popular gaming center at Tysons Corner [Virginia] earlier this month. On the afternoon of April 2, a D.C. police captain was at Level99 — a large entertainment center that bills itself as an adult playground, with more than 50 physical and mental challenges in themed rooms — when he lost his personal weapon while playing a game, Fairfax County police said. A teen found the weapon, thought it was a prop and pulled the trigger, investigators said. No one was shot. ‘En route for a weapons discharge at 1961 Chain Bridge Road at Tysons Corner,’ a dispatcher said. ‘Off-duty officer from D.C. dropped his gun by accident. Female picked it up and shot it. No one was shot.’ … Police turned over their investigation to the commonwealth's attorney office for review, but that office declined to file charges, saying the incident did not rise to the level of a crime.”
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Chris Stirewalt is political editor for The Hill and NewsNation, the host of "The Hill Sunday" on NewsNation and The CW, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of books on politics and the media.
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