Poll Watch: Fewer voters think Donald Trump will lose in 2020 compared to last December

This week, CNN released a poll show­ing that a major­i­ty of vot­ers sur­veyed cur­rent­ly believe that Don­ald Trump will win reelec­tion in Novem­ber of next year. 

54% of respon­dents to the poll (con­duct­ed for CNN by SSRS) believed Trump would win, while only 41% said he would lose.  

This week’s num­bers are a rever­sal of the fig­ures from Decem­ber, when only 43% believed that Trump would hold onto the White House in 2020.  

At the same point in Barack Obama’s pres­i­den­cy (in the Spring of 2011), only 50% thought the first African-Amer­i­can Pres­i­dent would win re-elec­tion in 2012, despite the fact that Oba­ma had just presided over the killing of Osama Bin Laden. He went on to demol­ish his Repub­li­can oppo­nent, Mitt Rom­ney 18 months lat­er.   

How­ev­er, that is not to say that Trump has become more pop­u­lar in the past six months. Trump’s approval rat­ing has fluc­tu­at­ed over the months, but he has remained thor­ough­ly dis­liked through­out his term in office – he is cur­rent­ly more than 9% under­wa­ter, accord­ing to Real Clear Pol­i­tics’ polling aver­age. 

Peo­ple dis­like Trump pri­mar­i­ly for his char­ac­ter and behavior. 

The most com­mon rea­sons giv­en for dis­ap­proval of Trump are his lying, racism, incom­pe­tence and pres­i­den­tial behav­ior. 

The change shown by CNN’s recent poll comes from an increase in pes­simism among those who dis­ap­prove of the Pres­i­dent. In Decem­ber, 81% of peo­ple who didn’t like the Pres­i­dent believed he would lose in 2020. 

This num­ber has dropped pre­cip­i­tous­ly, with only 67% hold­ing onto that belief. Mean­while, among those who approve of Trump the per­cent­age of those who pre­dict his re-elec­tion has stayed in the high 80s. 

The poll did not explore the rea­sons for the change, but sev­er­al things have changed over the past few months.  

In Decem­ber, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry had not begun, where­as now there are over twen­ty can­di­dates run­ning. Per­haps a gener­ic Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date com­pares much more favor­ably than the cur­rent scrum of many dif­fer­ent, inevitably flawed peo­ple argu­ing that they can take on Trump. 

There is also the fact that peo­ple can see that Trump’s approval rate has bare­ly shift­ed over the past few months (hov­er­ing in the low for­ties) despite a gov­ern­ment shut­down, mul­ti­ple res­ig­na­tions and fir­ings from his cab­i­net and the release of Robert Mueller’s report show­ing that Trump obstruct­ed jus­tice.

These are the kind of devel­op­ments hat should tank a president’s approval rat­ing, and yet Trump can ride out any storm at around 40% approval nation­wide, giv­ing jus­ti­fied cause for con­cern to those who dis­ap­prove of the Pres­i­dent. 

(In Wash­ing­ton State, Trump’s approval rat­ing stands at 35%, as mea­sured by two con­sec­u­tive pub­lic opin­ion sur­veys con­duct­ed for NPI by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling.)

The Mueller report may be a rea­son for the drop in those who think Trump will not return to pow­er. The spe­cial coun­sel inves­ti­ga­tion con­clud­ed with­out any charges being brought against Trump or mem­bers of his fam­i­ly, although Mueller empha­sized that Jus­tice Depart­ment pol­i­cy is that the cur­rent Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States can­not be pros­e­cut­ed for any crimes. 

How­ev­er, despite the appar­ent pes­simism of some, there is still a huge amount of time between now and the gen­er­al elec­tion. Many fac­tors – such as who the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee will be, or what new scan­dals will emanate from the regime’s immoral, imhu­mane poli­cies – are still unknown.