After months of low approval ratings from the general public, Trump’s popularity appears to be waning among even his biggest fans
by Julia Conley
President Donald Trump’s support has been on the decline since he entered office in January—but in a new poll from CNN, the president’s popularity among his previously-solid base is shown to be crumbling.
The newest numbers (pdf) suggest that even as Trump holds rallies in states that have been largely supportive of him, as he did last week in West Virginia, his approval ratings are eroding even among groups that have been fiercely loyal since he announced his presidential run two years ago.
Trump has been popular among white Americans without college degrees—winning 67 percent of the vote in this demographic in 2016—the broadest show of support from the group of any presidential candidate since 1980. The new survey, released Monday night, shows that only 35 percent of respondents in this group now “strongly approve” of the job he is doing as president. In February, 47 percent of whites without college degrees approved of Trump.
The poll was taken as Trump hit the 200-day mark of his term. The first six months of his presidency have been marked by inaction and scandal, with a Republican-controlled Congress unable to pass long-planned legislation repealing the Affordable Care Act, courts blocking Trump’s attempts to bar people from six majority-Muslim countries from entering the U.S., and an ongoing investigation into the Trump administration’s alleged ties to Russia.
In addition to Trump’s approval ratings, the poll addressed whether Americans feel they can trust the information that comes out of the White House. While a poll taken a month ago by Survey Monkey showed that 89 percent of Republicans viewed Trump as more trustworthy than CNN, the newest survey suggests that this may not translate to high levels of trust in the president.
Thirty percent of all respondents said they don’t trust any information they hear from the White House. Just 13 percent of Republicans and six percent of non-college educated whites trust all or almost all of what they hear from the administration; most respondents from each group said they trust “just some” of what the White House says (41 percent and 45 percent, respectively, gave this answer).
Another poll released by the American Research Group on Tuesday showed that Trump is also quickly losing support in New Hampshire, a key state in primary elections. Poll-takers asked Republican voters in the state who they would support in 2020 primary. Fifty-two percent answered that they would vote for Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, while just 40 percent responded that they’d support Trump. In 2016, Trump won the state’s Republican primary easily, gathering more than 35 percent of the vote while Kasich came in a distant second with just 16 percent.
