The Polling Report for December 28, 2017

A new American Research Group poll in New Hampshire finds just 27% of adults approve of the way President Trump is handling his job, while 66% disapprove, and 7% are undecided.

A new Public Policy Polling survey in Minnesota finds that a majority of voters don’t think Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) should resign, 50% to 42%.  Franken’s continued popularity is being driven especially by women. 57% of them like the job he’s doing to 37% who don’t.

A new Economist/YouGov poll finds that 31% of American adults believe that President Trump has successfully repealed Obamacare.  Of those who identify as Republican voters, 44% say that Trump has repealed Obamacare.

A new analysis of 91 targeted congressional districts, done by political scientist Chris Skovron and reported by Sean McElwee, shows clearly how more liberal voters actually are:

“We averaged support for each policy across the districts, to measure the average across the districts. In the average DCCC target district, fifty-nine percent of the public support allowing a woman choose whether she wants to have an abortion and 57 percent support a path to citizenship. More than half of individuals in the average district either strongly or somewhat agree that white people have advantages because of their skin and 73 percent support a higher minimum wage. Less than half of the public in the average district believe that the government should prohibit spending on abortion (the so-called Hyde Amendment).

In addition, these districts are favorable towards climate policy, with 64 percent support for a renewable energy mandate and 68 percent support for the Environmental Protection Agency regulating carbon in the average district. Far from running away from gun control, Democrats can safely support an assault weapons ban, which has support among 61 percent of individuals in thes average district. Democrats can abandon “tough on crime” rhetoric, because 63 percent support for ending mandatory minimums. Even examining only the most contentious districts, a progressive Democrat would be on the right side of all ten issues modeled.”

Yoni Applebaum at the Atlantic:  “A Wall Street Journal / NBC poll recently found that 24 percent of respondents strongly approved of Trump’s performance in office, and another 17 percent somewhat approved; 56 percent strongly or somewhat disapproved. (Those numbers are roughly in line with the average of other recent polls.) Ratings that tilt so far negative usually presage electoral setbacks for the president’s party—and indeed, the past year has seen Republican candidates underperform at the polls, on average, by wide margins.

But the more worrisome finding in that same poll may be the question that Trump himself most cares about: Would respondents vote for Trump if he runs for reelection? Fifty-two percent indicated they’d support a generic Democrat; just 36 percent backed Trump, and only 18 percent said they’d definitely vote for him.

Those findings, taken together, suggest that at least a quarter of those who tell pollsters they strongly approve of his performance aren’t certain they’ll vote for him next time around; at least one in eight of those with positive views aren’t even willing to affirm that they will probably vote for him.”