Donald Trump is becoming more unpopular in Washington State’s suburbs, NPI poll finds

For the third con­sec­u­tive year, a statewide sur­vey com­mis­sioned by the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute has found that three out of five like­ly Wash­ing­ton vot­ers dis­ap­prove of Don­ald Trump’s job per­for­mance, sug­gest­ing that most peo­ple liv­ing in the heart of Cas­ca­dia have well formed opin­ions about the cur­rent occu­pant of 1600 Penn­syl­va­nia Avenue in the oth­er Washington.

60% of respon­dents sur­veyed by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling on NPI’s behalf this week said they dis­ap­proved of Trump’s job per­for­mance, while 35% approved.

5% said they were not sure.

These find­ings are vir­tu­al­ly unchanged from last year (2019), when we found 61% dis­ap­proved of Trump’s job per­for­mance and 35% approved.

Sim­i­lar­ly, the year before that (2018), we found that 59% dis­ap­proved of Trump’s job per­for­mance while 35% approved. 6% were not sure.

Though each of our sur­veys was tak­en a year apart and had a dif­fer­ent sam­ple size, the statewide num­bers have stayed remark­ably consistent.

Even after impeach­ment and the onset of the nov­el coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, we’re still see­ing about the same over­all fig­ures as before, which is a tes­ta­ment to the strong feel­ings that peo­ple have about Trump. He is eas­i­ly the most polar­iz­ing per­son to occu­py the high­est office in the land in mod­ern Amer­i­can history.

How­ev­er, we did see move­ment in the num­bers at the region­al lev­el. Let’s dive into those. First, here are the statewide num­bers again:

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

ANSWERS:

• Dis­ap­prove: 60%
• Approve: 35%
• Not sure: 5%

Now, here are the num­bers by region:

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

ANSWERS:

• King Coun­ty
  • Dis­ap­prove: 72%
  • Approve: 23%
  • Not sure: 5%
• North Puget Sound 
  • Dis­ap­prove: 65%
  • Approve: 32%
  • Not sure: 4%
• South Sound
  • Dis­ap­prove: 69%
  • Approve: 27%
  • Not sure: 4%
• Olympic Penin­su­la and South­west Washington 
  • Dis­ap­prove: 48%
  • Approve: 47%
  • Not sure: 5%
• East­ern and Cen­tral Washington 
  • Dis­ap­prove: 43%
  • Approve: 52%
  • Not sure: 6%

The only region where Trump is above water (at least in this sur­vey!) is East­ern and Cen­tral Wash­ing­ton. 52% of vot­ers there said they approved of Trump’s job per­for­mance, while 43% dis­ap­proved and 6% were not sure.

Last year, we found almost the inverse in that region.

Trump also fared bet­ter in the Olympic Penin­su­la and South­west Wash­ing­ton (coun­ties south and to the west of metro Seat­tle) in this year’s survey.

How­ev­er, his gains among rur­al vot­ers were entire­ly can­celed out by a much high­er mar­gin of dis­ap­proval in the South Sound and North Sound regions.

It seems vot­ers in Pierce and Sno­homish coun­ties are increas­ing­ly aligned with vot­ers in King Coun­ty on the ques­tion of Trump’s job performance.

This is an omi­nous devel­op­ment for the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty, because statewide majori­ties are made and lost in the North Sound and South Sound regions. Trump’s unpop­u­lar­i­ty could be a drag on the entire par­ty’s tick­et, espe­cial­ly its statewide incum­bents Kim Wyman and Duane Davidson.

With no cred­i­ble Repub­li­can can­di­date run­ning for gov­er­nor this year, the par­ty sim­ply does­n’t have a high pro­file fig­ure like Lar­ry Hogan or Char­lie Bak­er who might be able to help it devel­op an iden­ti­ty dis­tinct from Trump’s tox­ic brand. Every sin­gle one of the par­ty’s guber­na­to­r­i­al hope­fuls is a Trump admirer.

Our sur­vey of 1,070 like­ly 2020 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers was in the field from Tues­day, May 19th through Wednes­day, May 20th, 2020.

It uti­lizes a blend­ed method­ol­o­gy, with auto­mat­ed phone calls to land­lines and text mes­sage answers from cell phone only respondents.

The poll was con­duct­ed by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute, and has a mar­gin of error of +/- 3.0% at the 95% con­fi­dence level.

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-con­trolled states such as Washington.

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

Tomor­row, May 22nd, we’ll share our head to head pres­i­den­tial matchup find­ing, which pit­ted pre­sump­tive Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nee Joe Biden against Trump. Join us here on the Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate on Fri­day for a dis­cus­sion of Wash­ing­to­ni­ans’ views on which par­ty should con­trol the White House for the next four years.