Democrats Get A Reminder: Their Base Is Not Very Liberal
The other big political story of this week happened about as far away from Washington, DC, as you can get in the contiguous United States. Progressive San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin got recalled on Tuesday night. At the same time, in the nonpartisan primary for Los Angeles mayor, progressive US Rep. Karen Bass was forced into a November runoff by businessman Rick Caruso.
Both results showed the potency of a tough-on-crime message, even in Democratic strongholds, as I discussed earlier this week.
But they also demonstrate that Democrats overall arent anywhere near as liberal as many progressives wish they were.
Take a look at a CNN/SSRS poll from earlier this year. Among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, 64% identified as moderate or conservative. Just 17% said they were very liberal, with the remainder indicating they were somewhat liberal.
Other polling isnt nearly as dramatic, though it makes the same point. Summer 2021 data from the Pew Research Center poll for instance showed that 15% of Democrats were very liberal, while 52% were either moderate , conservative or very conservative . The 2020 general election exit poll showed that just 42% of Biden voters were liberal, while 58% were moderate or conservative.
Its no wonder then that even in cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco, which Biden won by over 50 points, progressives are far from shoo-ins.
Polls Show Bidens Approval Rating Sliding To New Lows
The new president had spent his first half-year in the White House with high job ratings.
President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden leave after attending a service at Holy Trinity Catholic Church. | Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Photo
President Joe Bidens honeymoon with the American people is over.
As many Americans disapprove of Bidens job performance as approve, according to two new polls out Sunday a precipitous decline for the new president after he spent his first half-year in the White House with high job ratings.
Half of Americans, 50 percent, approve of the way Biden is handling his job as president in the CBS News poll but the same number, 50 percent, disapprove of Biden. In the NBC News poll, Bidens approval rating is 49 percent, compared to 48 percent disapproval.
Both polls show declines in views of Biden, whose presidency has been besieged by twin crises in recent weeks: a resurgence of the coronavirus domestically, and the rocky withdrawal of U.S. military personnel and other Americans from Afghanistan ahead of Bidens looming deadline. Bidens approval rating slid 8 points in the CBS poll since July, and its down 4 points since the last NBC News survey, in April.
But Bidens slide is troubling news for Democrats, who have only narrow majorities in Congress that are increasingly imperiled in next years midterm elections.
Legal Affairs And Bankruptcies
FixerRoy Cohn served as Trumps lawyer and mentor for 13 years in the 1970s and 1980s. According to Trump, Cohn sometimes waived fees due to their friendship. In 1973, Cohn helped Trump countersue the United States government for $100 million over its charges that Trumps properties had racial discriminatory practices. Trump and Cohn lost that case when the countersuit was dismissed and the governments case went forward. In 1975, an agreement was struck requiring Trumps properties to furnish the New York Urban League with a list of all apartment vacancies, every week for two years, among other things. Cohn introduced political consultant Roger Stone to Trump, who enlisted Stones services to deal with the federal government.
As of April 2018, Trump and his businesses had been involved in more than 4,000 state and federal legal actions, according to a running tally by USA Today.
While Trump has not filed for personal bankruptcy, his over-leveraged hotel and casino businesses in Atlantic City and New York filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection six times between 1991 and 2009. They continued to operate while the banks restructured debt and reduced Trumps shares in the properties.
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Real Clear Politics Trump Approval Rating: 408 Percent
In mid-September, Real Clear Politicswhich tracks numerous polls to find an averagefound the president to have a 40.8 percent approval rating, compared to 53.6 percent who disapproved of him.
The number was a downturn for Trump, who Real Clear Politics found had a 42.9 percent approval rating in mid-July, a notch higher than his 42.4 percent approval rating the month before.
The website found that the presidents approval rating has been declining since late August, amid criticism of his handling of Sen. John McCains death and guilty pleas by his former lawyer Michael Cohen and former campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
Ballotpedia’s Polling Index: Comparison Of Opinion Polling During The Trump And Biden Administrations
| Cabinet White House staff Transition team |
| Policy positions |
Weeks covered: 84
This page compares overall trends in opinion polling averages during the presidency of Joe Biden to those during the presidency of Donald Trump . Ballotpedia’s polling indexes are an average of polls that measure public sentiment on presidential job approval, congressional job approval, and satisfaction with the overall direction of the country.
Ballotpedia’s polling indexes are updated every weekday based on opinion polls released by qualifying sources. The most recent poll released by each qualifying source is included in the overall polling average. Polls are removed from the average when the same source releases a more recent poll or 30 days after the poll was last in the field, whichever occurred first. This page looks at these polling numbers on a week-over-week basis, starting with the first full workweek of the new president’s term. This means that the numbers on this page are all weekly averages of daily average poll results.
To view the current polling index, click here. For a detailed look at opinion polling during the Trump administration, including a full list of qualifying polls taken, click here.
HIGHLIGHTS
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When Will Joe Biden Be Sworn In
President=elect Joe Biden will be sworn in as the 46th President of the United States .
Donald Trump is planning to leave the White House early and says he wont be attending the ceremony the first president in over 100 years not to hand the job to their successor in person.
Celebs including Jennifer Lopez and Lady Gaga are expected to perform at the Inauguration, where security will be higher than ever following the storming of the Capitol on January 6.
You can watch the inauguration on most major American news networks, including CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS News and Fox News.
Two Different Paths To 41%
President Biden and former president Trump dont have a lot in common. But, they share the inauspicious distinction of having the lowest approval ratings in modern history for a president 500 days into his first term. The fivethirtyeight.com tracker has Bidens net approval rating at a dismal -13.3, two points lower than Trumps -11 in June of 2018.
But, the paths they took to these dismal ratings are very different.
Trump began his presidency with little support from independents and some skepticism among his own base. By the 2018 midterm election, Trump had consolidated his base, but remained deeply unpopular with independent voters. Meanwhile, Biden started his tenure with strong support from his partisans and decent approval ratings among independent voters. But, Biden lost altitude with both in the late summer/early fall of last year and has yet to regain that support.
The question now is whether the different routes their subpar approval ratings can tell us anything about the likely outcome of the November midterm.
However, opinions of Trump among independents started low and remained low throughout Trumps first two years in office. Gallup polling from the spring of 2017 found Trumps job approval ratings among independents at an anemic 36 percent. By the summer of 2018 they stayed in that same range . By October, just 38 percent of independents approved of the job Trump was doing in office.
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Nyc Democratic House Candidate Announces Positive Covid
Ben Kamisar
WASHINGTON New York City Democratic House candidate Suraj Patel has tested positive for COVID-19, he confirmed in a new statement Monday.
Patel, one of the candidates featured in a recent MTP Blog story about how the new social distancing guidelines and the threat of coronavirus has fundamentally upended House campaigns, disclosed his positive test in a new statement posted on social media and on the blogging platform Medium.
He said he began developing symptoms earlier this month which he described as troubling tightness in my chest and difficulty breathing followed by a regular fever of 102 degrees. Patel lives with two doctors, one of whom is his brother, which he said underscored the need for him to test to see if had COVID-19, the disease caused by coronavirus, so that his roommates would know whether they were at risk.
Patel said that ultimately, he and his two housemates all tested positive. But hes now fully recovered and asymptomatic.
New Yorkers and Americans at large are stepping up in a tremendous unified way. We know how important it is to our most vulnerable populations that we slow the growth of this COVID epidemic. But as this becomes less abstract and more personal when peoples loved ones start to show symptoms human nature is such that we are going to want certainty and safety, Patel wrote, before calling for universal COVID testing.
Patel is running in the Democratic primary against longtime Rep. Carolyn Maloney.
Data Download: The Numbers You Need To Know Today
58 percent: The share of Americans who say their bigger concern is making sure that everyone who wants to vote can do so, per new NBC News poll.
38 percent: The share who say their bigger concern is making sure that no one votes who is not eligible to vote.
1.6 million: The number of valid signatures collected by backers of the recall election against California Gov. Gavin Newsom, per the secretary of states office.
$400 million: How much the recall election could cost, according to the California Association of Clerks and Election Officials.
$15 an hour: The new minimum wage for federal contractors, starting in January, under an executive order that President Biden is set to sign.
89: The number of people New York fell short by in its count to retain one of its House seats.
32,276,517: The number of confirmed cases of coronavirus in the United States, per the most recent data from NBC News and health officials.
576,763: The number of deaths in the United States from the virus so far, per the most recent data from NBC News. (Thats 474 more than yesterday morning.
230,768,454: The number of vaccine doses administered in the U.S.
26.5 percent: The share of Americans who are fully vaccinated
2: The number of days left for Biden to reach his 100-day vaccination goal.
Sahil Kapur notes that Bidens first 100 days have been shaped in some ways by the first 100 days of his Democratic predecessor.
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Donald Trumps Approval Rating Reaches Highest Point Since 2017 As Administration Battles Coronavirus New Poll Shows
President Donald Trumps approval rating reached its highest point in three years Tuesday as his administration continues to battle the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new poll.
The CNN poll conducted by SSRS, an independent research company, found that 45 percent of respondents approve of the way Trump is handling his job, while 51 percent disapprove and 4 percent had no opinion. The poll surveyed 1,112 people and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.7 percent.
Trumps approval rating has hit 45 percent only one other time during his presidency, and that was less than two months after he took office in 2017. That poll showed the president had a 45 percent approval rating, with 52 percent disapproving, on March 5, 2017.
The new CNN poll showed that 42 percent of people believe the federal government is doing a good job at preventing the spread of the novel coronavirus in the United States. That rating is down from a CNN poll result in early March, in which 49 percent said the federal government was doing a good job in combating the pandemic while 43 percent said it was doing a poor job.
The U.S. now has over 1.35 million confirmed cases of the coronavirus, with 81,650 deaths reported, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. So far, 232,733 people have recovered from the viruss disease, COVID-19.
Who Was The Highest Polled Us President
George W. Bush holds the record for the lowest approval ratings, according to the Roper Center. But this former president is also the only one to have a rating above 90%.
In a poll conducted by ABC News in October 2001, he received an approval rating of 92%. The closest to come to this number was George H.W. Bush, who polled at 89% in 1991.
Other presidents who had high approval ratings are:
- Truman had an 87% rating in 1945.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt had an approval rating of 84% in 1942.
- Polling in 1961 found John F. Kennedy had an 83% approval rating.
- Lyndon B. Johnson had an 80% approval rating in 1964.
- In 2009, Barack Obama had a 76% approval rating.
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The Claim: President Joe Bidens Approval Rating Is 39% And Lower Than Donald Trumps Ever Was
After the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August, President Joe Bidens approval ratings took a hit. But some online posts exaggerate the depth of the drop.
Text in reads, Joe Bidens approval falls to 39 percent, worse than Trumps approval ever. The post did not indicate which poll its referring to.
A similar post accumulated 46,000 likes in six days before it was deleted. Other claims in this vein have racked up hundreds of interactions on Facebook and Instagram, according to CrowdTangle, a social media insights tool.
The claim is misleading. While one poll did put Bidens approval rating at 39%, the polling average a more accurate measure of a presidents popularity put it higher. Experts say Bidens approval rating, the lowest since he took office, is still higher than Trumps term low.
USA TODAY reached out to several social media users who shared the claim for comment.
Trump Leaves On A Personal Low Note
The 34% job approval rating for Trump in Gallup’s Jan. 4-15 poll is one point lower than his prior lowest single rating, registered on several occasions in late 2017. The first of these came in August 2017, as Trump was facing intense criticism over his unvarnished threats against North Korean aggression and his response to deadly violence by a white nationalist at a protest in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Between October and December of that year, his approval fell to 35% on three separate occasions as Justice Department officials charged several of Trump’s 2016 campaign figures with crimes in the Russia investigation, including former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to officials in the investigation in December 2017.
His support fell below 40% in two June 2020 polls amid racial justice protests in response to the death of George Floyd at the hands of police and growing displeasure with his handling of the pandemic. By the time of the 2020 election in which he sought a second term, his support had recovered somewhat, and 46% approved of the job Trump was doing.
Trump is the only president not to register a 50% job approval rating at any point in his presidency since Gallup began measuring presidential job approval in 1938. Likewise, he is the only president who did not have a honeymoon period of above-average ratings upon taking office. His initial 45% job approval rating proved to be his high point for his first year as president.
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President Bidens Approval Rating Has Hit Its Lowest Level During Is Tenure We Took A Look Back At The Rates For Past Presidents
President Bidens approval rating is hovering under forty-percent, raising concerns over how the numbers will impact the performance of Democrats this fall. FiveThirtyEight has tracked President Bidens approval rating at 38.4 percent, just under the level of support for Donald Trump had when he left office.
.@NateSilver538 breaks down possible reasons why Pres. Bidens poll numbers have dropped:
This Week
Donald Trump has yet to announce his candidacy but if reports are correct, and he does plan to run again, we could see the two face off again in 2024. Many Republicans running across the country have incorporated the idea that 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump. In a recent poll by Quinnipiac University, only fifteen percent of voters said that this would make them more likely to vote for a candidate. More than third of respondents said that this would have no impact on their decision to vote for a candidate, which is a bit shocking.
It could be that the approval rating of the president is falling because of the high levels of economic uncertainty. The same Quinnipiac poll found that only thirty-six percent of respondents believed that the president had a lot of power to control inflation. Interestingly sixty-five percent of Republicans were on this opinion, whereas only ten percent of Democrats agreed that the president has the power to lower prices.
A different question
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