President Donald Trump’s approval ratings at “at or near historic highs”. But how long will this current bump last and how will it affect the election in November?
According to CNN’s Chris Cillizza:
There's no question that President Trump is in the midst of his best polling moment in the entirety of his time in office right now.
A Washington Post/ABC poll released over the weekend showed Trump at 49% approval to 47% disapproval, the first time in that poll that those approving of his performance in office outstripped those disapproving.
Other surveys by Gallup, Fox News and Monmouth University all confirm the Post's findings: Trump at or near historic highs for job approval.
Luckily, we can turn to existing political science literature to help us predict the next president.
Is the surge real?
There has been a non-negligible increase in Trump’s approval rating. According to FiveThirtyEight’s poll tracker, he is up to 45% approval, a level he hasn’t seen since his first week in office.
We have to take the evidence that there has been a rally-round-the-flag effect, in which a leader gets higher approval ratings during a crisis.
Is the surge significant?
However, it’s important to keep this in perspective. A three point bump in the polls is not a rocketship of popularity.
Morning Consult’s tracker of major country democratic leaders shows Trump as experiencing a small trend upwards. The UK’s Boris Johnson, Germany’s Angela Merkel, France’s Emmanuel Macron, Canada’s Justin Trudeau, and Australia’s Scott Morrison, however, are shooting past him with 20-point gains.
Interestingly, Mexico’s Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro have seen their approval ratings drop as they dismiss COVID-19 as a major public health threat.
Going back in US history, we see rally-round-the-flag effects between 15 and 50 points. The below is from “Anatomy of a Rally Effect: George W. Bush and the War on Terrorism” by Marc J. Hetherington and Michael Nelson.
Put into global and historical context, Trump’s boost actually hasn’t been that big.
How long will it last?
This is the most important question for forecasting the election.
Will this rise in approval ratings last until November?
There is evidence that it won’t. George H. W. Bush’s boost during the Gulf War had started in January and faded by October - and that was about a war that the United States won.
There’s still no certainty about the effect of a mounting death toll, stories about federal government inaction, and a major recession on presidential approval ratings.
A better example might be George W. Bush after the Iraq War. As Gallup shows, he had a 14-point spike at the time of the invasion. That soon tumbled and began to slide as the public saw how badly managed the war was. The ratings only somewhat recovered during the election season, when partisan consolidation gave him a lift.
What to expect
The last point makes me pause in predicting what will happen.
Approval bumps don’t last. Bush won re-election, but his father didn’t. Jimmy Carter was at 61% at the start of the Iranian hostage crisis and then lost a year later.
But partisanship is a strong factor - perhaps the strongest in politics today. It stabilized W. Bush at the end of 2004 even as Iraq was falling apart and it could keep Trump within striking distance of an Electoral College victory no matter what happens.
So while we don’t want to read too much into the rallying effect we see now, we can’t dismiss it either. It’s been a very long March and we still have six months ahead of us before Election Day.
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Thanks for reading.
Chris
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