Analysis: Trump’s Plummeting Poll Numbers Clearly Threatening McConnell’s Majority Now
This is the sixth piece in NDN's new weekly polling round-up, published every Thursday. You can find previous weeks' analyses here.
As we’ve been writing these last few months, the President’s bungling of his COVID response has been both a policy and political failure. The policy failure is manifest – the US still has among the highest infection rates in the world, up there with Russia, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Sweden and the UK; 100,000 are dead; we are 35th in per capita testing; the US economy took a far bigger hit than other developed nations; and at least 10 states are now seeing their hospitalization rates increase.
What continues to remain hard to understand is how the President has chosen to play his policy disaster politically. Rather than appearing to learn from his mistakes and course correcting, he’s chosen to question and undermine aspects of our response designed to keep us safe and are popular with voters – masks, smart stay at home efforts, even testing and tracing. Republican Governors who’ve attacked the virus with force have seen their poll numbers shoot up. Not Trump – his numbers are dropping to what now has to be seen as a very dangerous place for him. Using 538’s Trump job approval aggregate with likely and registered voters, the President begins the morning at 42.7% approve/54.0% disapprove (-11.3), among the worst showings of his Presidency. On Election Day 2018 the 538 tracker had Trump at 44/52.4 (-8.4) and he lost that night in the House races by 44.8/53.4 (-8.6). He is three points lower today, -11.3, and dropping.
As I was quoted in the New York Times last Friday saying, what has to concern the national GOP the most right now is that Trump’s poor showing may be creating a dangerously low ceiling for Senate incumbents too. If the 538 job approval tracker was pretty accurate in picking Trump’s final vote share in 2018, and it’s 42.7 today, let’s assume Trump is sitting at 42-44 now (Real Clear Politics has Trump at 42.4). Here are the head to head numbers for GOP Senators in public polls released since April 15th via 538 (adding MI Senate GOP challenger James too):
Arizona – 38, 41, 42
Colorado – 31, 31, 36
Iowa – 42, 43
Kansas (Kobach) - 42
Maine – 42, 43
Michigan – 35, 36, 37, 37, 40, 43
Montana - 39
North Carolina – 33, 34, 39, 40, 41, 41, 44
South Carolina – 42
Georgia, which has a June 9th primary
Purdue - 45, 45, 46
Collins – 44, 45
Loeffler – 32
Of these 10 GOP held seats (2 in GA), Rs do not have a clear lead in any of them; they only have a few polls showing leads at all; and as we can see there sure does seem to be a very low ceiling for all these Senate Rs this year - the numbers 41, 42, 43 keep showing up again and again. Incumbents in the low 40s this late in an election cycle seldom win their elections.
If Biden wins the election, Democrats need to win 4 of what are now 10 competitive GOP Senate seats to flip the Senate. What we are seeing here, above, are signs of a wave election, consistent across the board depression of one party’s numbers regardless of the experience or talent of the incumbent. While of course it is too early to know if 2020, like 2018, will be anti-GOP wave, the chances of it are rising significantly now. While we don’t know if Democrats will win those 4 seats (AZ/CO look good now, IA/ME/NC really promising), the chances of Democrats not just winning 4 but winning 6-7-8 seats is now something that is clearly on the table.
As we’ve written before, it is impossible to explain what Trump is doing now. His COVID response has been a governing and political failure. His refusal to acknowledge it all, and course correct remains ever harder to understand. Mitch and his colleagues have to be increasingly aware that their captain is steering their ship towards the iceberg. Let’s see if mutinies begin in the coming days, or if they are all just resigned to living the good life of a retired Senator/lobbyist and have begun talks about the next chapters in their lives.
