Polls of Trump’s Credibility and Support for His Re-Election Show Him Doing Far Worse Than His General Approval Rating

One of the unending surprises of life in the Trump era for Americans who oppose the current President is how well he does in his general approval rating, when it seems so obvious that he is a disgraceful liar and con man.

Well, the good news is that questions about Trump’s credibility in those same polls show he does far worse on the subject of his honesty than whether Americans approve of the job he is doing or not. And majorities of Americans do not want him to run for re-election or want someone else.

Of course, his approval rating is below 50% in nearly every poll, and there was the best poll of all on Nov. 6th- An Election!!

The National House Popular Vote Tracker (via David Wasserman @redistrict) has the Dems up 53.3%-44.9%, 8.4% points better, with the current sum of all the votes for Democratic candidates for the House across the nation at 60.2 million, to 50.7 million votes for Republican candidates.

Nonetheless, it’s a bit of a relief to compare the credibility question to the approval question. Here are some comparisons of You Gov/The Economist, which does national daily and weekly polling, and the Quinnipiac Poll, which polls frequently. First, those two polls on whether Americans think Trump is honest or not:

Here is the Quinnipiac Poll, from Nov. 21st, 2018, from 1,046 registered voters nationwide.

The You Gov/Economist poll reported only 34% of registered voters thought Trump was honest and trustworthy; 36% of registered voters thought Trump was honest in the Quinnipiac Poll, a similar result. Results on the questions are also broken out by race and ethnicity. For Blacks, 9% found him honest and trustworthy in You Gov/The Economist, and 8% in Quinnipiac. For Hispanics, the results were 19% in You Gov/The Economist, and 22% in Quinnipiac. For Whites in You Gov/The Economist, 37% found Trump honest and trustworthy, 48% not honest and trustworthy. In the Quinnipiac Poll, 43% of whites find Trump honest, 52% do not. Only the Quinnipiac poll breaks out whites by education- there whites with college degrees found him honest- 34%, Not Honest- 62%. Whites without college degrees found him honest- 53%, not honest 41%.

Here are the responses from two more questions from the Quinnipiac poll: First, on who voters trust to tell the truth on important issues, Trump or the news media; the second, a question on whether voters thought it was necessary to send troops to the U.S.-Mexico border.

The results of the poll on who to trust, Trump vs. the media, track very closely with the question about whether people think he is honest or not in the same Quinnipiac Poll. 34% say they trust Trump more than the media; 36% said they thought he was honest. On the question of sending troops to the border, 38% agreed it was necessary. This question has connections to whether people buy in to the idea that the migrants at the border are a threat, or not, a general concern about illegal immigration, and a concern about whether Trump was just exploiting a non-threat to gain votes for the midterm election.

The fact that the result, 38% thought it was necessary to send troops, is close to the percentage who think he is honest, 36%, may show the extent to which the public thought sending troops to the border was just another con from the con man.

Now we get to the approval ratings from those very same polls.

Here is Quinnipiac, Nov. 21.

The approval rating was 45% in You Gov/The Economist, far ahead of the 34% who think he is honest in that poll. For Quinnipiac, the approval rating was 41%, still ahead of the 36% who think he is honest.

Looking ahead to 2020, several polls also show desire for Trump’s re-election to be below his approval rating. Here’s You Gov/The Economist again from Nov. 25-27.

And here is the Monmouth Poll on Trump Running for Re-election vs. Someone Else

You Gov/Economist has 39% of registered voters wanting Trump to run for re-election, 53% not. Monmouth Poll has 37% of registered voters say he should be re-elected, 58% not. Monmouth’s corresponding number on Approval were 43% Approve, 49% Disapprove. Fourteen percent of Republicans and 48% of independents( 24% undecided) do not want him to run for re-election in You Gov/The Economist. Sixteen percent of Republicans and 59% of independents want someone else in the Monmouth Poll.

The fact that Trump polls poorly as far as his credibility is concerned, and that majorities do not want him to run for re-election, reflect the national revulsion for his low character.

The number in the approval rating does not provide much information about how people really feel about him; the distinction between strongly approve and somewhat approve does provide a number, the strongly approve number, for his core supporters, usually about two-thirds of those who approve. Those folks just seem to have drunk the spiked Kool-Aid from Trump government relations spokespeople Fox News.

The difference between this 27-30% of American voters who strongly approve of Trump and a number in major elections – 45% or so – who always vote Republican, reflects, in large part, the difference between those in the Fox News cocoon and people who are extremely conservative and/or just wouldn’t consider voting for a Democrat no matter how awful the Republican is.