Trump Hits 50%!
In the Rasmussen Poll, the only survey that polls actual voters, President Donald Trump has moved up steadily since the new year and has now reached a new plateau of 50 percent job approval with only 49 percent disapproving.
Never before in his presidency has Trump cracked 50 percent, and never before, in any reputable poll, have his positive marks outweighed the negative ones.
Trump is no longer underwater.
Other polls have not reached this level and CNN has his approval at only 39 percent. But CNN surveys registered voters while Rasmussen only counts likely voters.
Since almost half of the registered voters do not actually cast ballots, limiting the survey respondents to those who actually intend to vote is the only real way to gauge popularity and voter attitudes.
Other surveys, like the Reuters/Ipsos poll (which has Trump at 40 percent) don’t even care if the respondent is a voter. All adults over 18 qualify to take the survey.
Its been a long climb for Trump. But the combination of passing the tax cut and eliminating the requirement to buy health insurance with the good economic news pouring in has done the trick.
But, to put him over the top, the president indicated some flexibility on gun control in the wake of the Parkland school shooting.
By demonstrating that he is not some kind of ideological Republican who won’t bend regardless of the situation, he is engendering a confidence among voters.
The Donald Trump who now backs bans on bump stocks (which permit weapons to be converted into machine guns) and a minimum age of 21 for most purchases of guns is not the angry, intolerant abusive person he has been too often in the past.
Americans want to like and approve of their president and now, at last, Donald Trump seems to qualify.
(Whether one concedes that he is, in fact, at 50 percent, everyone must agree that his ratings have improved for the first sustained period in his presidency since the first of the year).
This positive trend leaves the Democrats stranded.
Rather than advance positive solutions for the country, they have wallowed in “never Trumpism” and just throw adjectives at the president. Their inability to even understand why someone might back Trump leaves them far out of the national consensus.
Such thinking leads to the famous characterization of Trump voters as a “basket of deplorables,” a statement made by Hillary Clinton — en route to her defeat.
Dick Morris is a former adviser to President Bill Clinton as well as a political author, pollster and consultant. His most recent book, “Rogue Spooks,” was written with his wife, Eileen McGann.
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