Reprinted with permission from Shareblue.
During his usual morning Twitter rant, Trump decided to brag about his relatively high approval rating among Latinos in a new national poll. But awkwardly for Trump, the same Marist/NPR/PBSpoll also shows that most Americans “definitely” plan to vote against him in 2020.
Trump tweeted, “Marist/NPR/PBS Poll shows President Trump’s approval rating among Latinos going to 50%, an increase in one year of 19%. Thank you, working hard!”
Approval doesn’t translate into votes, however. Trump failed to mention that the same poll shows only 30 percent of registered voters said they would “definitely vote for President Trump” in 2020 — and a whopping 57 percent of voters said they would “definitely vote against him.”
Latino voters gave similar answers to these questions, despite giving Trump higher marks for his overall job performance. Just over one in four Latinos, 27 percent, said they plan to vote for Trump in 2020 — slightly lower than the support from Latinos he received in 2016 — while a large majority, 58 percent, said they plan to vote against him.
The poll also shows that Trump’s overall approval ratings have sunk in the last month, from 42 percent in December to 39 percent in January. And 53 percent of voters now disapprove of the job he’s doing.
Even support among his Republican base is shaky. When asked if they wanted someone to challenge Trump in the Republican primary, Republicans and Republican-leaning independent voters were split: 44 percent said yes, and 45 percent said no.
Overall, these results spell disaster for Trump — who spent the first half of his term as the most unpopular president in modern history. And the latest poll lines up with several other polls showing that Trump is becoming even more unlikable as he enters his third year in office.
CNBC reports that polls show Trump is “hemorrhaging support amid a political standoff over his proposed border wall that has resulted in the longest government shutdown on record.”
Trump initiated the government shutdown in late December, after telling Democratic leaders he would be “proud” to own the shutdown if they refused to hand over more than $5 billion for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Americans increasingly blame Trump and Republicans for the shutdown. An estimated 800,000 federal workers are not being paid because Trump refuses to reopen the government unless he receives his ransom for the wall. Some will get back pay eventually, but many are simply losing income this year.
While the Democratic-led House of Representatives has passed numerous bills to end the shutdown, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), taking orders from Trump, has refused to allow a vote to reopen the government.
Trump is wildly unpopular, and has a long history of cherry-picking and misrepresenting polls to pretend that he isn’t. His obsession with keeping the government shut down over his border wall is harming the country, making him even more unpopular — and even threatening his 2020 re-election chances.
Published with permission of The American Independent.
