Lisa Desjardins:
Let’s start with that top figure, the approval rating. Where are Americans that we asked about that right now? Forty-five percent approve of the job Donald Trump is doing as president so far. I’m going to write that number down. I want you to remember that 45 percent.
Now, more Americans disapprove, but just barely. Why is this 45 number significant? This is Trump’s approval rating up and down over time. Here we are right now at 45 percent. This is the largest approval rating he has experienced in office as president, much higher than where he ended during his first term.
Now, another thing we asked folks about, all of these actions that Trump is taking, do you think that they are for the good mostly or not for the good, for the bad, for this country? Did they make things better or worse? When we asked that question, 45 percent, that same number, said, we think these actions make things better in this country.
Now, it’s not a coincidence that those numbers are the same; 45 percent generally like the job he’s doing, think it’s for the better. What’s being driven — what’s driving that is a single force, Republicans.
Of those who — when we ask people who they think — if Trump is doing a better job, 88 percent of Republicans think what Trump is doing is for the better for this country, versus just 12 percent of Democrats. These two groups live in completely different worlds, almost different planets.
Independents, a minority of them also believe Trump is doing a better job. It is Republicans who are really pushing Trump’s numbers to go higher right now. Now, at the same time, this poll was taken before the confrontation in the Oval Office with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, but Lee Miringoff with the Marist poll says what Trump is doing is he’s flooding the zone with controversial action.
Lee Miringoff, Director, Marist Institute for Public Opinion: We’re just seeing a lot of things happening with little time for the public to digest. The net effect of it all is there’s a sense on the part of the public that some things are moving just a little too fast and they’re not totally convinced that things are moving in the right direction.
