Fission Polls
Early last evening, my friend Barry Glasser sent me an email, enthusiastically asking, “Are you watching Rachel Maddow??! It’s like she’s reading our emails!” I replied that, no, I was recording it, because I was busy writing my article for Friday. When I finally got around to the recording, by the end of the very first sentence, I saw where she was going and knew I’d have to write a disclaimer here: “Honest, I wrote this article before watching Rachel Maddow’s show last night! Really.” I’m almost thinking of suing her for hacking my email account…
And so, we dive in.
There have been five polls on Trump’s approval after just one month in office, commonly seen as a new president’s honeymoon period. And all five show essentially the same results. All of them nuclear explosive for Trump.
Trump started his term at approximately 47% approval. Not only is that approval historically low (the second lowest among modern-day presidents -- just slightly ahead of his own first term -- though it's actually two points below what he was elected at), but the disapproval is historically massive. In fact, although the numbers varied a bit among pollsters, for Gallup it was so massive that they said this was the first time in their company's history that a president's first approval poll after being inaugurated was negative! At 48%.
And then only one month later, those historically terrible numbers have cratered. He now has a negative approval – four weeks into his honeymoon.
Here are just a few numbers from some of the various polls.
Overall approval --
Approve 44%
Disapprove 51%
Further, keeping in mind that the economy was the #1 issue for people during the election, the poll results on that are disturbing for the administration.
Do you approve of Trump on the economy -- 39%, down from 43%
Think economy is on the wrong track -- 53% (up 10 points from a month earlier)
The new Quinnipiac poll results confirm the numbers of the Reuters poll. In fact, it mirrors them almost exactly.
January
Approve – 46
Disapprove – 43
February
Approve – 45
Disapprove – 49
That’s a nine-point swing in just one month. During his honeymoon period. Not even the first 100 days – this is the first 30 days!!
The Ipsos poll shows that 57% of all Americans say that Trump has exceeded his authority since taking office.
But there are also two specific things in the Ipsos poll that stand out above just the general approval/disapproval results.
Only about 33% of Independents approve of Trump, while 50% disapprove. This is the group of voters who in a razor-thin election swing the results.
And 79% of Republicans say Trump should follow the court rulings.
CNN’s poll, conducted by SSRS, confirms all of these results. Trump’s approval is slightly higher in their poll– but so is his disapproval.
Approve – 47%
Disapprove – 52%
But the most damning number is to the question: “Has Trump done enough to reduce prices?” This was perhaps the main issue he ran on, promising to bring down prices.
Yes – 11%
No – 62%
And again, all of these results come just one month into his honeymoon period! Before inflation, Ukraine, and his dementia all worsen.
The numbers at this point are early – though being early make them all the more devastating for what they say. Trump and the MAGOPs support plummeting in just one month. Tough it’s hard not to look at them and want to say, “Geez, where were you in November? Did you not believe what he was saying??” But…well, with Special Elections and the Mid-Term Election coming up soon, better late than never. Outraged pushback in defense of democracy is a harsh mistress.
Just one tiny example. It's only a state Special Election in Red Iowa but notable, and the story fell under the wire. But last month, on January 28 -- only one week after Trump was inaugurated -- Democrats flipped State Senate District 35 when Mike Zimmer defeated MAGOP Kate Whittington by 4 points...in a district Trump had won only months earlier in November by 21 points!
Having a 51% disapproval during his first month is horrible. But down 10 points in just a few weeks during his honeymoon??? That’s otherworldly bad. The thing is, though, that’s not the biggest problem for Trump. The biggest problem, which really hasn’t gotten addressed much, if at all, is that it’s hard to see it getting better – after all, consider:
Trump is not surrounded by anyone who wants to stop him and his worst instincts. He’s not surrounded by competent people who could make things better even if he wanted them to. He’s doing nothing to bring down inflation – and worse, his tariff wars will even increase it. His mass firings will raise the unemployment rates. He’s throwing Ukraine under the bus (a country most Americans support), undermining our NATO allies, and caving to Putin – and the Gallup poll shows that Americans don’t trust Putin by 81-9!!!! He released violent Jan. 6 Insurrections in his first act, and Americans are against that by 63 points. He named anti-fax crackpot Robert Kennedy Jr. to be Secretary of Health and Human Services – and a measles epidemic has already broken out in Texas and spread to Oklahoma, with 13 people already in the hospital, all of whom are unvaccinated. He really believes he can do no wrong, makes no mistakes, everything is other people’s fault, and that he won in a landslide. When in reality, he actually won by 1.4%, lost a seat in the House, and got under 50% of the vote. And he does want to be king. And his mass job cuts are hurting workers in his own party as much as it hurts Democrats. (We see MAGOPs in the Senate begging him to make exceptions for their state!) And…and…and, make no mistake, he has dementia. Which is degenerative. He will only get worse.
And then, for good measure, toss in his malignant narcissism (a medical term, not just a pejorative, that psychologists have pointed to for Trump -- where the person not only has to be right about everything, but will try to destroy it all if he doesn't get his way).
I don’t see how any of this, let alone all of it, gets better for him. Or for elected MAGOPs in Congress who are enacting his worst policies and have embraced it all.
In fact, the added problem for them is that they've indoctrinated their cult base so much that if they even back off just one of the party's fascist goals to try and stave off the poll atomic meltdown before it reaches the core, that base always gets angry that promises were broken.
There is really only one thing that could possibly bolster Trump, though just briefly, like putting a band-aid on someone with a broken arm and cancer – it will stop some bleeding but the problem is only going to worse. It’s that he has suggested sending checks from “DOGE savings.” While that could have a temporary benefit (it had a slight help for him during his first term), the problems for long-term gain from this are that 1) getting such checks are not imminent and wouldn’t occur (if it even ever does) until much farther down the road when the damage of his devastating carnage is better seen, inflation has worsened, and his poll numbers have dropped, and 2) unlike when he signed the checks that got sent out during his first time in office, he won’t be running for re-election. (And even with the checks, that didn’t turn out well.)
But that one slight, possible boost aside, he’s got to live with the current, one-month-in polls and a bleak future for turning them around.
"These four polls [now five],” said CNN’s senior data analyst Harry Enten, “all of them tell a consistent story, and that is Trump is on the negative side of the ledger. "His net approval is negative. He is underwater like 'The Little Mermaid.'”
Enten also noted that Trump should be especially concerned by what is moving those numbers down. "One of Donald Trump's great strengths during his first term, one of Donald Trump's great strengths during the 2024 campaign, was the economy,” " Enten said. “The idea that ‘Donald Trump could fix the economy’. "This was one of Donald Trump's great strengths, now it's one of his great weaknesses. "I honestly never thought I'd see the day in which Donald Trump would be polling so poor on the economy – but that day is here."
Brutal as Harry Enten’s words are, they leave a critical matter of history out. He’s absolutely correct saying that Trump’s strength at the start of his first terms was on the economy. What he doesn’t mention is why Trump’s numbers on the economy were high then – it was because he inherited a strong economy from Barack Obama. And furthermore, though the U.S. economy is the strongest in the world right now, inherited from Biden, there is nonetheless still inflation. It’s just better than the rest of the world – but as we’ve seen, the public doesn’t get that. Or care. So, since there is still inflation (and it will likely get higher), that’s a totally different scenario from the economy he inherited his first term. And he won’t be getting “the wind at his back” and clear sailing from that. No matter how much better the economy is here compared to everywhere in the world, the public will just see inflation.
Moreover, though Russia’s war against Ukraine isn’t much on the public’s mind, it likely will become so, if Trump continues on his same path. As noted above, the country largely supports Ukraine in the war, and by 81-9% don’t trust Vladimir Putin. Yet there is Trump calling Ukraine President Zelenskyy a "dictator" and accusing him (!!) of starting the war Russia and Putin began. And is threatening to make American enemies of our NATO allies. All of which has gone so far beyond rationality that it’s even gotten members of Trump’s own party to push back publicly.
As Washington Post columnist David Ignatius explained on MSNBC: "The striking thing to me, Mika, is that Republicans finally seem to have found their voice in directly, clearly disagreeing with Donald Trump in his criticism of Zelenskyy and this absurd claim that Ukraine started the war." Adding, "That seems to have blown a circuit for the Republicans and it's about time.”
When you’re running a cult and give the members a chance to speak out against you for the first time, it risks opening the flood gates.
And this isn’t just opening the door a little crack. And it’s not just three or four MAGOP senators speaking out against Trump, like conservative Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) on the Senate floor calling Putin “a cancer and the greatest threat to democracy in my lifetime.” A cancer, he says, that will spread to the “South China Seas” and “across the globe”. But far more, it’s also the conservative MAGOP Sen. Roger Wicker from Mississippi – the chairman of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee (!!) – saying that Ukraine and European leaders must be at the negotiating table and, when asked if he thinks Putin can be trusted, instantly responded pointedly, “No. Putin is a war criminal. And should be in jail for the rest of his life. If not executed.” And then, in case even that wasn’t clear enough, added – choosing his words carefully – “Vladimir Putin has violated every tenant of international law and should be indicted and prosecuted and jailed, possibly executed.”
And a Washington Post/Ipsos polls show that right now, today, Americans want Democrats to have control of Congress as a check on Trump – by 13 points! (Trump thinks he won a landslide by a razor thin 1.4, and his party lost a seat in the House.)
And all this is during Trump’s honeymoon period. When everything is at its best. But this is not going to get better from Trump. Or his complicit party in Congress.
Between his plummeting and negative polls numbers, no one around his circle to push back, no one of competence to turn things around, mass firings, MAGOP senators understanding how awful his actions are that they’re begging to get exceptions to their states – yet not pushing back and instead embracing it all, tariff wars, growing inflation, embracing Putin, pushing away our allies, wanting to make our closest ally Canada a state, wanting to buy Greenland, wanting to take back the Panama Canal, wanting to buy Gaza and turn it into a beachfront resort, MAGOP senators speaking out in defense of Ukraine and against Putin, Trump's malignant narcissism, and his degenerative dementia --
This is not going to get better for Trump. Nor for the elected MAGOPs in Congress who are choosing to enact Trump’s worst instincts – which are the only instincts he has – and are complicit in it all.
And sadly, for a long while, not for the United States. But there are Special Elections in April, and early voting in the Mid-Terms starting a year after that.
The Trump administration is the Titanic without the life rafts. And no radios to call for help. And former Fox hosts navigating.
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