Trump's Support Among His Base Is Slowly But Surely Falling

Donald Trump’s foreign trip apparently required him to scale down his tweeting. That, along with the royal treatment by the Saudis, may have been just enough to push his approval ratings up slightly to just above 40% according the HuffPost tracker. And it is true that Trump still retains the overwhelming support of Republicans as over 80% of them still stand behind the President. But there are some signs that Trump’s support is beginning to waiver, and it is possible that once they start to fall, they will fall fast and hard.

A Fox News poll out just before the holiday weekend showed that Trump’s support among Republicans, which had been close to or over 90% at earlier points in his Presidency, has dropped to just 81%, falling over 5 points in just one month. That is still showing enormous support but the precipitous drop is certainly a real warning sign.

And Nate Silver also points out that the number of people that strongly support Trump in his surveys has fallen by a third and now sits at only just above 20%, a 10 point drop since mid-February. This is doubled by the number that strongly disapprove of Trump, a total that has increased by 10 points since Trump was inaugurated.

There seems to be a sense among Trump’s most avid supporters and even among Republicans in Congress that Trump can somehow defy political reality and the polls can be ignored. And you have to admit, he is very good at deflecting attention and simply moving on to the next scandal. But the fact of the matter, the national polls were largely correct in 2016 and it was simply the undemocratic nature of the Electoral College and less than a hundred thousand votes in specific states that allowed Trump to win.

This Republican belief in the ability to ignore polls is also helped by the extreme gerrymandering and voting restrictions that the GOP has managed implement over the last decade and a half. The House member responsible for the 2018 election campaign recently said he felt the House would stay in Republican hands because of gerrymandering (sorry I can’t find the link). And a Wisconsin state legislator bragged that their newly implemented voting restrictions would make it harder for Hillary Clinton to win the state in 2016. Some of those restrictions were later struck down by the courts, but there was obviously some truth to his statement.

But it is doubtful that Trump can win again with just 46% of the vote. And it is also doubtful that Republicans can keep on relying on gerrymandering and voting restrictions to maintain their grip on power, especially if Trump’ approval remains as bad as it is. And those numbers could get much worse if there is any kind of economic downturn, something that is not beyond the realm of possibility after this long-running recovery, or real solid evidence collusion with the Russians is uncovered, (though I sometimes wonder how much this would even influence Republicans).

As Nate Silver notes, “If you look beneath the surface of Trump’s approval ratings, you find not hidden strength but greater weakness than the topline numbers imply.” And that could spell real trouble for Republicans in Congress.