I’ve been waiting almost three years to see some significant slippage in the president’s approval numbers among Republicans, and I’ve been consistently disappointed. This isn’t political disappointment. It’s more about maintaining some small amount of faith that humanity can survive through the end of my son’s natural lifetime without a class of scientists culling the herd and moving out to colonize space.
I need some sign that the mass of humanity has a future, and Republicans who respond to surveys just don’t afford that kind of confidence. But I got a glimmer of hope with my morning coffee on Friday morning. The latest ABC News/Washington Post poll (see full results here) provided what I’ve been looking for:
Trump is the first president since the early days of modern polling more than 70 years ago never to have achieved majority approval in office, and his average rating is 21 points below the average for his predecessors dating to Harry Truman at this point in their presidencies. Closest to Trump was Jimmy Carter, at 48 percent average approval.