“Presidential job approval is a simple, yet powerful, measure of the public’s view of the U.S. president’s job performance at a particular point in time.—Gallup”
Over the weekend, I read Paul Bedard’s absolutely fascinating read on the latest measure of public opinion measure (as gauged by opinion surveys) of pro-life President Donald Trump.
Here are his opening two sentences:
Despite a wave of critical news coverage and Democratic catcalls, President Trump sits at his “highest” approval in the latest Gallup survey, and above where four of the last six presidents, including Barack Obama and George W. Bush, were at this point of the first term.
After two weeks of bad news on the coronavirus and economic front, Trump maintained his 49% approval rating, and his disapproval crept up just 1 point, to 48% in the Gallup survey of adults, a broad test.
What makes this analysis so interesting is (a) context [Trump’s comparative standing to the last six presidents ] and (b) that President Trump’s approval numbers remain steady in the face of an onslaught of “critical news coverage and Democratic catcalls” and an economy in freefall, a reflection of the quarantine. (“And the latest Economist/YouGov survey showed that just one-third of voters blame Trump for the virus-crushed economy,” Bedard notes).
But Bedard’s Washington Examiner post is not one-tenth as interesting as the latest New York Times lament that pro-abortion former Vice President Joe Biden is not benefiting.
It’s not as if Giovanni Russonello is plowing a lot of new ground. He’s re-tilling the same ground, largely growing out of something we wrote about last week: “A CNN poll released on Wednesday found Mr. Biden leading the president by five percentage points nationwide, but trailing by seven points among voters in crucial battleground states.”
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In that same poll, we’re told, “Four in five Republican voters said they were quite enthusiastic about voting this year; just 56 percent of Democratic voters said the same.”
But the truly upsetting part for the Times is that even in a Monmouth poll conducted earlier that [mysteriously] found Biden well ahead, “there were signs that his virtual campaign has yet to instill passion in crucial parts of his coalition.” Russonello writes
Among liberal voters, 33 percent said they were less enthusiastic than usual about voting in this year’s election. Voter enthusiasm ran higher among conservatives; just 12 percent of those voters said they were less enthusiastic than in previous years.
Regardless of the wording, the “enthusiasm gap” is huge.
In conclusion, to spotlight the two issues—the impact of the president’s handling of the pandemic and the economy—Russonello writes
In the CNN poll, voters were just six points more likely to say Mr. Biden would do a better job than Mr. Trump at responding to the virus outbreak. A month ago, the difference was nine points in Mr. Biden’s favor.
Asked about the economy, voters told CNN that Mr. Trump was their preferred steward by a margin of 12 points. A month ago, Mr. Trump led in this regard by just four points.
These results suggest a fairly obvious conclusion, do they not? For all the problems we are suffering through because of COVID-19, even fewer Americans believe Biden would do a better job than Trump than did a month ago.
This, I might add, in spite of the aforementioned “Despite a wave of critical news coverage and Democratic catcalls.”
LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics. This post originally appeared in at National Right to Life News Today —- an online column on pro-life issues.
