No surprise: NPI poll finds Washingtonians don’t like Donald Trump’s job performance

Wash­ing­ton State vot­ed for Hillary Clin­ton in the 2016 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion and has been a hotbed of resis­tance activ­i­ty since Don­ald Trump’s Elec­toral Col­lege vic­to­ry a year and a half ago, so it’s not too sur­pris­ing that most Wash­ing­to­ni­ans don’t have a favor­able opin­ion of Trump’s job per­for­mance — if we can even call it that.

A new sur­vey com­mis­sioned by NPI finds that three in five Wash­ing­to­ni­ans (59%) dis­ap­prove of the job Trump has been doing, while only 35% approve.

6% said they were not sure.

(And we’re not sure why six per­cent of the respon­dents to the sur­vey said they were not sure, giv­en how polar­iz­ing and media dom­i­nant Trump is.)

What’s real­ly inter­est­ing, though, is that our sur­vey found that Trump is under­wa­ter in every region in the state, not just in Puget Sound. It so hap­pens many rur­al Wash­ing­to­ni­ans aren’t hap­py with Trump either.

Here are the num­bers again for the entire sample:

QUESTION: Do you approve or dis­ap­prove of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s job performance?

ANSWERS:

• Dis­ap­prove: 59%
• Approve: 35%
• Not sure: 6%

Our sur­vey of six hun­dred and sev­en­ty-five like­ly 2018 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers was in the field May 22nd-23rd, 2018. The sur­vey used a blend­ed method­ol­o­gy with auto­mat­ed phone calls to land­lines and online inter­views of cell phone only respon­dents. The poll was con­duct­ed by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling for NPI, and has a mar­gin of error of +/- 3.8% at the 95% con­fi­dence level.

And now, by region:

QUESTION: Do you approve or dis­ap­prove of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s job performance?

ANSWERS:

• King Coun­ty
  • Dis­ap­prove: 70%
  • Approve: 24%
  • Not sure: 5%
• North Puget Sound 
  • Dis­ap­prove: 54%
  • Approve: 41%
  • Not sure: 5%
• South Sound
  • Dis­ap­prove: 56%
  • Approve: 37%
  • Not sure: 7%
• Olympic Penin­su­la and South­west Washington 
  • Dis­ap­prove: 59%
  • Approve: 36%
  • Not sure: 5%
• East­ern Washington 
  • Dis­ap­prove: 48%
  • Approve: 46%
  • Not sure: 6%

Yes, even in East­ern Wash­ing­ton, Trump is not above fifty percent.

This is an omi­nous sign for the Repub­li­can Party.

Trump is obvi­ous­ly still pop­u­lar with his rabid base (and will con­tin­ue to be), but his polar­iz­ing, destruc­tive pol­i­tics and ter­ri­ble poli­cies have alien­at­ed a lot of peo­ple, includ­ing in Repub­li­can-friend­ly regions. That rein­forces the notion that dis­tricts like Wash­ing­ton’s 5th could be in play this autumn. The 5th is cur­rent­ly rep­re­sent­ed by Repub­li­can Cathy McMor­ris Rodgers, but it might not be after November.

McMor­ris Rodgers is fac­ing a chal­lenge like she’s nev­er faced before, from for­mer Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Lisa Brown. Brown’s can­di­da­cy has gal­va­nized the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty here to a degree I have not seen before. Polls show she’s on McMor­ris Rodgers’ heels, which is right­ly caus­ing Repub­li­cans to pan­ic.

The melt­down has been a sight to see.

The state Repub­li­can Par­ty has sent out a num­ber of dis­joint­ed emails late­ly attack­ing Brown and call­ing on sub­scribers to sup­port McMor­ris Rodgers, who in past cycles has been assumed to be safe giv­en the deep red lean of the dis­trict. Play­ing defense in the 5th appears to be the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty’s top pri­or­i­ty in 2018, aside from try­ing to get three-time los­er Dino Rossi elect­ed in the 8th, where the par­ty would like to hold on to Dave Reichert’s seat.

The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, mean­while, is fired up to cap­ture both dis­tricts, and would  like to put the 3rd Dis­trict in play as well. The par­ty has sev­er­al can­di­dates com­pet­ing in the 3rd, as well as a chal­lenger for Dan New­house in the 4th.

No Demo­c­rat has rep­re­sent­ed East­ern or Cen­tral Wash­ing­ton since 1994, when Repub­li­cans George Nether­cutt and Doc Hast­ings defeat­ed Tom Foley and Jay Inslee. (Inslee lat­er returned to Con­gress as the rep­re­sen­ta­tive from one of the state’s west­ern dis­tricts, and today, he serves as Gov­er­nor of Washington.)

Foley was the first and only Wash­ing­ton­ian to serve as Speak­er of the Unit­ed States House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. A states­man, Foley’s lega­cy is still felt in the dis­trict today. Nei­ther Nether­cutt nor McMor­ris Rodgers have come close to rep­re­sent­ing the dis­trict as ably as he once did. But Lisa Brown says that if she’s elect­ed, that is pre­cise­ly the kind of rep­re­sen­ta­tion she will provide.

Nation­wide polls show that more Amer­i­cans also dis­ap­prove of Trump’s job per­for­mance than approve, although the dis­par­i­ty is less pro­nounced than it is in Demo­c­ra­t­ic-lean­ing states such as Washington.

• Civiqs: Trump job performance
• Huff­Post Poll­ster: Trump job performance
• FiveThir­tyEight: Trump job performance
• Real­Clear­Pol­i­tics: Trump job performance

Trump com­pares unfa­vor­ably to all of his recent pre­de­ces­sors, who each enjoyed high­er approval rat­ings at this stage of their pres­i­den­cies than he does.