Donald Trump’s position with rural voters in Washington State appears to have worsened since the spring of 2020 and is back to about where it was in 2019, a new survey conducted for the Northwest Progressive Institute has found.
Overall, 60% of Washingtonians disapprove of Trump’s job performance, while 37% approve. 3% of respondents said that they were not sure.
Those statewide numbers, from a poll just back from the field this morning, are identical, or nearly identical, to what we’ve been finding for years.
However, at the regional level, Trump’s position in regions with higher concentrations of right wing and conservative voters has deteriorated, which definitely isn’t good news for the Republican ticket.
Take Eastern and Central Washington.
Back in the spring, we found Trump’s approval rating in that region had improved to 52%, up from 49% in October of 2019 and 47% in May of 2019.
Just 43% there said they disapproved of Trump’s job performance back in May.
However, Trump has given up those gains. Our newest survey finds voters in Eastern and Central Washington evenly split on whether Trump is doing a good job. Half (49%) say he is. Half (50%) say he is not. Only 1% are not sure.
It’s a similar story in Southwest Washington and on the Olympic Peninsula, where Trump has regressed from 47% approving and 48% disapproving back in May 2020 to 51% disapproving and 45% approving now.
It’s not all bad news for Trump and the Republicans, however. Trump is doing better in the suburbs (particularly north of Seattle) than he was back in May, at least in this survey. He’s also doing somewhat better in the South Sound, though 64% of voters in the Pierce-Thurston area still disapprove of him.
King County voters’ views remain basically unchanged. 72% disapprove of Trump, the same as back in May, while 24% approve compared to 23% back in May.
Let’s dive into the numbers. Here’s the statewide results again:
QUESTION: Do you approve or disapprove of President Donald Trump’s job performance?
ANSWERS:
- Disapprove: 60%
- Approve: 37%
- Not sure: 3%
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: 24%
- Not sure: 3%
- North Puget Sound
- Disapprove: 57%
- Approve: 41%
- Not sure: 3%
- South Sound
- Disapprove: 64%
- Approve: 36%
- Not sure: 1%
- Olympic Peninsula and Southwest Washington
- Disapprove: 51%
- Approve: 45%
- Not sure: 4%
- Eastern and Central Washington
- Disapprove: 50%
- Approve: 49%
- Not sure: 1%
As we can see, Trump has returned to negative territory in every region.
Because all politics is Trump nowadays, these findings indicate that Democrats in Washington State may be in a better position to secure downballot victories in places like the 19th Legislative District (where State Senator Dean Takko and State Representative Brian Blake are working hard for reelection) than they were back in the summer when the Top Two election was held.
Republican elected officials and party operatives are well aware that Trump’s presence atop their ticket could have an inverse coattails effect this year. (It’s something they’re talking about internally on an almost constant basis.)
They are also aware that Trump’s campaign is going badly.
“Y’all have a good chance of winning the White House,” South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham said yesterday, conceding to his Senate Democratic colleagues that Republicans are desperate to get Amy Coney Barrett confirmed before their hold on the executive branch and the Senate potentially goes away.
“Thank you for acknowledging that,” Minnesota’s Amy Klobuchar replied.
“I think it’s true,” Graham added.
Not only is Trump on the verge of defeat, but so are Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans, to the surprise of many pundits. Democrats have succeeded in creating a broadly competitive map, with pickup opportunities in states won by Trump as well as states that Hillary Clinton won, like Maine and Colorado.
Washington has a strong Democratic tilt, especially at the statewide level, and no credible analyst expects Republicans to be competitive in either the presidential or gubernatorial races here. However, the state does have closely contested downballot races that could be affected by how voters perceive Donald Trump and the Republican Party, which is effectively the new Trump Organization.
Our survey of six hundred and ten likely 2020 Washington State voters was in the field from Wednesday, October 14th through Thursday, October 15th.
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 +/- 4.0% 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
Voting in the November 2020 general election will end on Tuesday, November 3rd. Donald Trump’s current term in office expires on January 20th, 2021.
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