President Trump isn't out with rural voters in the latest PBS/NPR/Marist poll, conducted in late April among 1,439 adults, but he's down sharply from the February high—and less than half of them now approve of his performance in office. The first 100 days did not go well.
According to the poll, just 46 percent of rural voters now approve of Trump's job performance, while 45 percent disapprove. In February, 59 percent approved and 37 percent disapproved.
The bottom line: he promised economic relief, but his policies and proposals, inasfar as they are anything more than Tremendous Content, have made things worse for many Americans. But overall approval remains steady in the lower 40s (high 30s by some other polls), representing a base that's all-in on whatever he does.
Trump has a relatively high approval floor. The country is highly divided, and Trump's supporters are passionate, even if they now constitute a slight minority of the country. In our historical approval numbers, Trump's first term featured among the lower average approval ratings (41.7 percent, based on the final number at the end of each day of his term) but also the narrowest spread of any presidential term since the dawn of approval ratings. Judged by the 95th percentile range of his daily numbers4, Trump's approval numbers had a floor of 37.8 but a ceiling of 45.0 during his first term. It fluctuated, but not by much. And now Trump is even more of a known commodity: he's been the dominant figure in American politics for almost a decade now.
All it takes is a half-decent jobs report or a shiny new insult and the media moves on from whatever bad news ails him. The sub-30 approval ratings of the Bushes? Ancient history.
Previously:
• President Trump's approval rating already underwater
• As stocks tumble, so does Trump — to his lowest approval rating so far this term
