Donald Trump presidency discussion thread V

Quin_Dub

Leroy42 wrote: »

Don't the polls show that he consistently ranges within the mid 30's? He neither goes up or down too much. Wouldn't that be his base and it would appear pretty solid, in fact very solid, to me.

I haven't seen recent polling info for the last month or so , but in early December I read an article that said whilst his numbers were very low (lowest average support level of any President in the modern era) they were also the most stable.

Every other President showed various peaks and troughs in their support but his just hasn't moved in any statistically significant way up or down since the elections.

It will be interesting to see more recent polling data to see if the current debacle is having any material impact , especially on his support among GOP voters.

oscarBravo

Leroy42 wrote: »

Could this go the same way as the repeal and replace debacle? Trump made all sorts of noises about that, remember the big photo call on the WH lawn after the Congress bill passed?

But he basically simply stopped talking about it and let it die. Nobody is talking about repeal and replace anymore. It is totally forgotten about. At the time it was felt that it was a major issue for Trump supporters but they simply moved on.

The difference is that funding the federal government is an issue that won't just quietly goes away - one way or another, Trump has to sign something to get the government working again.

jooksavage

Leroy42 wrote: »

Could this go the same way as the repeal and replace debacle? Trump made all sorts of noises about that, remember the big photo call on the WH lawn after the Congress bill passed?

But he basically simply stopped talking about it and let it die. Nobody is talking about repeal and replace anymore. It is totally forgotten about. At the time it was felt that it was a major issue for Trump supporters but they simply moved on.

When he let R&R wither and die, he at least had The Wall to fall back upon. If that goes, what else is there? Trump has nothing left in the tank. If he's still around this time next year the "build the wall" stuff is going to sound "soooo 2016" at the election rallies. Trump's biggest problem with his base now is that they simply lose interest as he becomes boring, trotting out the same old catchphrases like a sitcom that should have been cancelled 2 seasons ago.

Leroy42

I wouldn't be so sure of that. He has NK, Iraq, Syria, Russia witch-hunt and whatever crazy he comes with in terms of the Dem opponent.

Nobody was calling for a wall before 2015, suddenly it was the core issue for all his supporters. He will simply find the next new "national emergency" to create and offer a solution to.

jooksavage

Now that I've mentioned it, I'm wondering what the reelection campaign is going to look like.

Certainly he'll have lost the momentum that propelled him through the primaries and into the Presidency. The catchphrases are worn out. The racism that was so shocking in 2015 now just sounds lazy. Considering he couldn't barely find anyone willing to take John Kelly's job, he'll definitely struggle to staff his campaign team. Who would want a job there anyway? Half of the colourful characters he had doing "surrogate" work for him last time around are under indictment. The only thing he WILL have this time around is the unalloyed support of the Republican party but even that mightn't be very helpful: much of Trumps appeal came from his "outsider" status. When you have Lindsay Graham and Mitch McConnell batting hard for you, you can hardly call yourself a maverick anymore.

I haven't even factored in the Mueller investigation and what that's going to mean for him: just look at what's come to light in the last 12 months and Mueller hasn't even delivered his report yet.

If Trump is still in the picture this time next year, we're in for the most depressing, dragged out, incompetent slugfest in the history of western politics.

Quin_Dub

jooksavage wrote: »

When he let R&R wither and die, he at least had The Wall to fall back upon. If that goes, what else is there? Trump has nothing left in the tank. If he's still around this time next year the "build the wall" stuff is going to sound "soooo 2016" at the election rallies. Trump's biggest problem with his base now is that they simply lose interest as he becomes boring, trotting out the same old catchphrases like a sitcom that should have been cancelled 2 seasons ago.

This is his issue..

What does he campaign on for re-election?

The Economy isn't going to get any better and in fact is far more likely to be in decline by the time we get to the meat of the campaign season.

His efforts around Health-care have been non-existent , the Tax cuts are deeply unpopular (which is why the GOP barely mentioned them in the mid-terms), so all he's left with is "The Wall".

But - If he gets the Wall , then he has nothing left to campaign with . If he doesn't get the Wall and he's still banging on about it in September 2019 then the likely response from voters will be "You've had 4 years and haven't got it , why would we give you 4 more?"

jooksavage

Leroy42 wrote: »

I wouldn't be so sure of that. He has NK, Iraq, Syria, Russia witch-hunt and whatever crazy he comes with in terms of the Dem opponent.

Nobody was calling for a wall before 2015, suddenly it was the core issue for all his supporters. He will simply find the next new "national emergency" to create and offer a solution to.

I was listening to Tommy Vietor, late of the Obama administration, taking about Trump's foreign policy recently. One of the reasons he's getting away with some of the insanity we've seen in the last 18 months is that the Base don't really care about foreign policy one way or another. They're unlikely to care if his blunders diminish the US' global standing. They'll be just as unperceptive to perceived diplomatic victories. It's not an issue for them.


The danger here is Trump's war-making powers. It's one of the few areas he still has a lot of control. He'd also find more than a few willing Senators, particularly if the adversary was Iran. As GWB showed, war can be a path to reelection. If he did go down this road, he'd lose the support of the America First brigade - Bannon, the Koch brothers etc. - but they weren't going to be save his reelection prospects anyway.

Trent Houseboat

Leroy42 wrote: »

I wouldn't be so sure of that. He has NK, Iraq, Syria, Russia witch-hunt and whatever crazy he comes with in terms of the Dem opponent.

Nobody was calling for a wall before 2015, suddenly it was the core issue for all his supporters. He will simply find the next new "national emergency" to create and offer a solution to.

The idea of a Mexican border wall has been around for a long time. So much so that it was parodied in the terrible fourth season of Arrested Development back in 2013. I think one of the Ricks, Santorum or Perry advocated a border wall in 2012.

People have been banging on about a border wall for a while, it's just everyone knew they couldn't actually be serious.

Leroy42

Well, yes I meant as a serious political and voter issue. It was certainly discussed, they already have miles of fence on the border, but Trump propelled it to No 1 issue is what I meant.

It was not an election issue before that.

Professor Moriarty

jooksavage wrote: »

I was listening to Tommy Vietor, late of the Obama administration, taking about Trump's foreign policy recently. One of the reasons he's getting away with some of the insanity we've seen in the last 18 months is that the Base don't really care about foreign policy one way or another. They're unlikely to care if his blunders diminish the US' global standing. They'll be just as unperceptive to perceived diplomatic victories. It's not an issue for them.


The danger here is Trump's war-making powers. It's one of the few areas he still has a lot of control. He'd also find more than a few willing Senators, particularly if the adversary was Iran. As GWB showed, war can be a path to reelection. If he did go down this road, he'd lose the support of the America First brigade - Bannon, the Koch brothers etc. - but they weren't going to be save his reelection prospects anyway.

The Koch brothers are already feuding with trump over tariffs and Bannon has been sidelined with loss of 'credibility'. It will be interesting to see who Trump can turn to for re-election considering most of his advisors/supporters have resigned, been fired or jailed.

StringerBell

Leroy42 wrote: »

Don't the polls show that he consistently ranges within the mid 30's? He neither goes up or down too much. Wouldn't that be his base and it would appear pretty solid, in fact very solid, to me.

Not necessarily, he was up to 40 and a little above at one point. That to me would signify his base added to the core GOP vote. The GOP vote is extremely strong a d more tribal in nature than the Democrat vote. It takes a lot for them to abandon a member of the party as we have seen, the mental gymnastic capability is incredible.

As he is losing GOP voters (very slowly up to now) his polling numbers have eroded also. As I said, this is a trend I think will continue. From memory even his own people estimate his core base, Trump people, at around about 15%.

I argue it is actually less but there you go.

For example, if we are to agree with his own numbers and have his core support at 15% then he should be always comfortably sitting between 40/50% approval. But you start to erode some of that traditional Republican vote and you see the numbers drop. A 10% drop from traditional GOP voters leaves him between 30/40%

8-10

everlast75 wrote: »

I knew if even if the Bill is signed off (and that's taking that McConnell puts the Bill to Trump) Trump has a veto, but what I didn't know is that once you get to a certain number of republicans supporting it in the Senate, they can override the veto! (Thanks Lawrence O'Donnell)

It's beyond stupid that their system allows one person from deciding whether the Senate will vote on a bill that the House passes.

Legislation should follow a process. If the House passes it then the Senate should vote. If the majority party disagree then they vote it down. You don't need 1 person saying that a bill that has passed the lower house should or shouldn't go for a vote because of a perception of a veto maybe being used. Just put it through.

demfad

Itssoeasy wrote: »

So the crime isn't collusion which the Trump team are technically correct on that. The crime is conspiracy to collude is a crime.

Trump is already an unindicted co-conspirator in Cohen's fraudulent payments to pay off two women who had sexual relations with Trump. The FBI's position is that Trump instructed Cohen, which makes his crime equal to Cohen's.

MarinersBlues

StringerBell wrote: »

Not necessarily, he was up to 40 and a little above at one point. That to me would signify his base added to the core GOP vote. The GOP vote is extremely strong a d more tribal in nature than the Democrat vote. It takes a lot for them to abandon a member of the party as we have seen, the mental gymnastic capability is incredible.

As he is losing GOP voters (very slowly up to now) his polling numbers have eroded also. As I said, this is a trend I think will continue. From memory even his own people estimate his core base, Trump people, at around about 15%.

I argue it is actually less but there you go.

For example, if we are to agree with his own numbers and have his core support at 15% then he should be always comfortably sitting between 40/50% approval. But you start to erode some of that traditional Republican vote and you see the numbers drop. A 10% drop from traditional GOP voters leaves him between 30/40%

Is this not an accurate collation of opinion polls?
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/
It shows that he has been fairly consistently in the 38%-42% range.
I find this astonishing, but it is a pretty credible site from my experience.

aloyisious

Itssoeasy wrote: »

My question was would the SC have to check it to stop issues like this happening.

If the black marking was his, probably yes in ref to legal documents. If it was the Manafort team's job, it's their baby to ensure their client's revelations were handled discretely. They'd kick up a stink if the SC was interfering with their paperwork - a double-bonus.

Professor Moriarty

MarinersBlues wrote: »

Is this not an accurate collation of opinion polls?
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/
It shows that he has been fairly consistently in the 38%-42% range.
I find this astonishing, but it is a pretty credible site from my experience.

It's about as good as you'll get. You need to screen out a couple of polls such as Harris Interactive and Rasmussen and focus on Yougov, Ipsos, Morning Consult etc. Even when you do that, he is consistently in the range you mention.

Leroy42

Leroy42 wrote: »

I wouldn't be so sure of that. He has NK, Iraq, Syria, Russia witch-hunt and whatever crazy he comes with in terms of the Dem opponent.

Nobody was calling for a wall before 2015, suddenly it was the core issue for all his supporters. He will simply find the next new "national emergency" to create and offer a solution to.

If he's still there to campaign again, it will be a circus. It won't be about a candidates merits/flaws, it will just be insults and silly nicknames all round.

Eric Cartman

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

It's about as good as you'll get. You need to screen out a couple of polls such as Harris Interactive and Rasmussen and focus on Yougov, Ipsos, Morning Consult etc. Even when you do that, he is consistently in the range you mention.

Nat silver really cleaned up his bias , all through 2016 and 2017 they were constantly under representing conservative support for anything, seems to be a lot more on the ball these days

Professor Moriarty

Eric Cartman wrote: »

Nat silver really cleaned up his bias , all through 2016 and 2017 they were constantly under representing conservative support for anything, seems to be a lot more on the ball these days

Yeah, FiveThrirtyEight's advantage is that it lists all of the important polls. It's better to disregard his analysis though and draw your own conclusions from the mainstream polls.

Eric Cartman

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

Yeah, FiveThrirtyEight's advantage is that it lists all of the important polls. It's better to disregard his analysis though and draw your own conclusions from the mainstream polls.

+1 on that , the data is solid but Nate is blue through and through , not a chance of balanced or anything conservative friendly out of his analysis

MarinersBlues

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

Yeah, FiveThrirtyEight's advantage is that it lists all of the important polls. It's better to disregard his analysis though and draw your own conclusions from the mainstream polls.

I would have thought the main strength was how they rank and weight the polls.

Excellent site and very interesting.

spacecoyote

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

It's about as good as you'll get. You need to screen out a couple of polls such as Harris Interactive and Rasmussen and focus on Yougov, Ipsos, Morning Consult etc. Even when you do that, he is consistently in the range you mention.

They do actually already do that, to an extent. They re-factor the results from Rasmussen, etc... based on the inherent bias in their numbers (and before anyone jumps on a Blue bias thing on that, they also refactor the Dem leaning polls too)

So an Approve/Disapprove of 47%-53% on Rasmussen gets re-factored to something like a 42%-58% in their calculations.

He has been rock solid in the range 40-42 approval for months now, you have to go back to September last year for the last time their consolidated approval dropped below 40% on 538

Its worth noting though, if you dig down into the numbers, for example on YouGovs latest polling which shows 40% Approve, 53% disapprove, 7% unsure. But of the 53% disapproving 43% of those Strongly disapprove. In other words, the % of the population that strongly disapprove of the president is greater in total that all of those that approve (either strongly or somewhat)

They did have an interesting article on 538 around his party approval numbers. He has something like 89% approval numbers from Republicans, which is higher, at this point in his term than pretty much any of the last 10 presidents.

But one thing that they point out is that, there has been an increase in the number of voters who were previously registered Republicans who are now registered Independents, mainly due to where the GOP have gone under Trump.

So, his approval from Republicans is artificially inflated by the fact that there are less moderate registered Republicans now than there were in the past.

Quin_Dub

spacecoyote wrote: »

They do actually already do that, to an extent. They re-factor the results from Rasmussen, etc... based on the inherent bias in their numbers (and before anyone jumps on a Blue bias thing on that, they also refactor the Dem leaning polls too)

So an Approve/Disapprove of 47%-53% on Rasmussen gets re-factored to something like a 42%-58% in their calculations.

He has been rock solid in the range 40-42 approval for months now, you have to go back to September last year for the last time their consolidated approval dropped below 40% on 538

Its worth noting though, if you dig down into the numbers, for example on YouGovs latest polling which shows 40% Approve, 53% disapprove, 7% unsure. But of the 53% disapproving 43% of those Strongly disapprove. In other words, the % of the population that strongly disapprove of the president is greater in total that all of those that approve (either strongly or somewhat)

They did have an interesting article on 538 around his party approval numbers. He has something like 89% approval numbers from Republicans, which is higher, at this point in his term than pretty much any of the last 10 presidents.

But one thing that they point out is that, there has been an increase in the number of voters who were previously registered Republicans who are now registered Independents, mainly due to where the GOP have gone under Trump.

So, his approval from Republicans is artificially inflated by the fact that there are less moderate registered Republicans now than there were in the past.

So has there been a decrease in overall registered Republicans or just a shift in the mix ?

As an aside , the whole concept of "Registered" Republican/Democrat/Independent is just very weird to me - I mean , why?

Penn

Quin_Dub wrote: »

So has there been a decrease in overall registered Republicans or just a shift in the mix ?

As an aside , the whole concept of "Registered" Republican/Democrat/Independent is just very weird to me - I mean , why?

I'm just guessing but I think you have to be registered Republican (for example) to vote in the Primaries, which means you're able to vote for who you want the actual candidate for your party to be (both in terms of President and lower electoral positions) when it comes to the actual national election.

Quin_Dub

Penn wrote: »

I'm just guessing but I think you have to be registered Republican (for example) to vote in the Primaries, which means you're able to vote for who you want the actual candidate for your party to be (both in terms of President and lower electoral positions) when it comes to the actual national election.

So does that mean if you're registered "independent" you can't vote in a Primary?

jooksavage

Quin_Dub wrote: »

So does that mean if you're registered "independent" you can't vote in a Primary?

I believe this is the case for states with closed primaries.

robinph

Penn wrote: »

I'm just guessing but I think you have to be registered Republican (for example) to vote in the Primaries, which means you're able to vote for who you want the actual candidate for your party to be (both in terms of President and lower electoral positions) when it comes to the actual national election.

Does that mean that each State is running the preliminary votes for the individual parties? That should be down to the party itself to organise.

Penn

Quin_Dub wrote: »

So does that mean if you're registered "independent" you can't vote in a Primary?

I was just reading that some states you don't have to be registered for either to vote in the primaries, and can therefore vote in both or either primary (even vote as a registered Democrat in a Republican primary I think), but some states you can only vote in the primary for the party you're a registered member of. It seems to differ from state to state.

FreudianSlippers

Penn wrote: »

I'm just guessing but I think you have to be registered Republican (for example) to vote in the Primaries, which means you're able to vote for who you want the actual candidate for your party to be (both in terms of President and lower electoral positions) when it comes to the actual national election.

You're correct - one must be "registered" to a party in order to vote in their primaries. Although, it only works for Democrat/Republican as there isn't an "independent party" - it's just non-registered individuals.

FreudianSlippers

Penn wrote: »

I was just reading that some states you don't have to be registered for either to vote in the primaries, and can therefore vote in both or either primary (even vote as a registered Democrat in a Republican primary I think), but some states you can only vote in the primary for the party you're a registered member of. It seems to differ from state to state.

Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Hawaii, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Vermont, and Wisconsin have open primaries, but it doesn't mean you can vote in both primaries. You can simply pick which primary you want to vote in on the day.