Trump's State-by-State Approval Ratings Should Scare the MAGA Out of Him.

[elleng]

'There has been a lot of discussion in political circles about Donald Trump’s job-approval ratings, what they portend, and Trump’s Electoral College strategy for 2020, which doesn’t necessarily require a popular-vote plurality. But in the end, of course, the conjunction of the Electoral College with Trump’s state-by-state popularity is where the deal will go down.

The online polling firm Civiqs has published a new set of state-by-state job-approval ratings for Trump as of August 11, and it shows how the president’s overall standing (a 43 percent approval rating nationally, which happens to match the current RealClearPolitics polling average) might translate into electorate votes. It’s not a pretty picture for the president, to put it mildly.

Civiqs shows the president’s net approval ratios being underwater (i.e., negative) in 10 states he carried in 2016: Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin. If that were to represent how the 2020 elections turn out, Trump would have a booming 119 electoral votes. And it’s not as though he’s on a knife’s edge between victory and defeat in all these Trump 2016 states where he’s doing poorly: He’s underwater by 12 points in Pennsylvania, 11 in Michigan, and nine in Arizona, North Carolina, and Wisconsin. And there’s virtually no indication that states that narrowly went for Clinton in 2016 are trending in Trump’s direction: His approval ratios are minus 18 in Colorado, minus 15 in Minnesota, minus 12 in Nevada, and minus 27 in New Hampshire. These are, by the way, polls of registered voters, not just “adults,” so they should be a relatively sound reflection of the views of the electorate.

In case you just don’t trust this particular pollster, the other publicly available survey of state-by-state presidential job approval is from Morning Consult, and its latest numbers (as of July) are pretty similar. They show Georgia and Texas as positive for Trump, and North Carolina as very close. But all the other “battleground states” are quite the reach for the incumbent.'>>>

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/08/trumps-state-by-state-approval-ratings-should-scare-him.html?

[KPN]

1. Flawed. He didn't win all of those States in 2016.

He stole them. He and the KGOP will do it again if we are not hyper-vigilant.

[TwilightZone]

2. Plenty of people who disapproved of him voted for him in 2016.

Disapproval doesn't equate to voting against him, unfortunately. We need to keep that in mind. His vote percentage totals in 2016 were significant higher than his approval ratings, including in the battleground states he narrowly won, and we need to be prepared for the same in 2020.

The trends are positive for us, but it's still all about a small handful of states, similar to what happened in 2016. Unless, of course, something somewhat unexpected happens, like the Dem candidate winning Texas. Then, it's likely a sign of a blowout.