Has anyone polled voters on whether or not they watched Trump's latest TV speech and if they did how it was received? I watched about 1 minute of it before I knew it was going to make things worse for him. I doubt there is anything Trump can do to change his popularity over the next 10 months before the Congressional elections. Republicans need to get voters to turn out and I doubt that a very unpopular President, who is generally seen as the cause of at least four of economy's problems, affordability, tariffs, fewer jobs, and uncertainty, is going to do anything to improve Republican turnout. On the other hand, he seems to be everything he can to increase Democrat and anti-Trump Independent turnout.
Regarding the "speech" I think everyone is missing a massive thing: what the hell was he saying? Everyone is so focused on treating it like it was a normal pitch in support of his policies/the economy. But what the hell did we just watch? There was no coherence in the words themselves, his literal sentences half the time. Prices good, prices bad, Biden bad inflation, drug prices 600% off, WARRIOR DIVIDENDS, tariffs!
How could he possibly have put together a coherent political message across an entire speech? Sure it's not likely to help because the economy is actually shit so Trump shouting ECONOMY GOOD is a middle finger to real people and they'll notice that.... but more than anything IT SIMPLY IMPOSSIBLE for it to be helpful for you when one knows what the hell you're even saying!
We need polling on what likely voters think of their own congressperson, their party in congress, and congress in general to compare to Trump's approval ratings. Or are we confident that the old story of "love my own, hate the whole" is a fair assumption?
I don't think the people who voted for him are tired of the lies, or maybe they simply don't care. They like a president that does something. Another way to improve his polling is to find a common enemy to pick on. He's done that this week with the Venezualan sanctioned boats blockade, the new ban on transgender treatments for minors, and now stopping the green card lottery after the Brown/MIT shootings. Many who voted for him don't vote pocketbook, they vote ideology. I am betting his overall approval ticks up.
With respect, the political scientist Jonathan Bernstein writes this "I keep going back to it, but it’s simply true: The biggest thing by far in who people support in presidential general elections is party, and the second-biggest thing is how happy or unhappy people are with how the current president is doing, mostly (but not entirely) on the economy and war or peace. Everything else combined – campaign ads, debates, issues, etc. – is a poor third. Which means that candidate characteristics overall only have a minor effect on vote choice, and age is only one candidate characteristic.
I know: It often feels as if we’re choosing based on other things. But almost always what’s actually happening is that we make our choice based on party, and then discover that we actually think that, say, Richard Nixon is charming or Jimmy Carter is charismatic.1 Or we’ll pick a trait that goes with our favorite candidate, even if we’ve never thought of it before, and decide that it’s not only the important one but the one on which we based our decision. As in when people claimed to support George W. Bush because he would be more fun to have a beer with. It’s not that we’re trying to lie; it’s just how our political culture works on us." More at https://goodpoliticsbadpolitics.substack.com/
In the round, a big majority of Americans favor a President based on their experience of a growing or at least stable prosperity and absence of war. The Culture War issues you cite are generally only of interest to perhaps less than 20% of voters and their partisanship is pretty much fixed.
Yes, and Trump's personal morbidity works strongly against him. His obsession with owning the news cycle, firing off reactive executive orders and commenting on social media about this, that and every little thing makes him a ubiquitous control figure. So, the corollary of this, quite naturally, is that voters hold him accountable for every lie and idle brag.
It's as if he's the drunk at the end of the bar boasting about how he could do 50 one-armed push-ups and the other weary tavern patrons are saying, put up or shut up.
The thing with even the strongest MAGA supporters is they KNOW HE LIES ALL THE TIME.
But MAGAs believe the lies because their cult leader tells them that he knows what they want even more than they do themselves!
When he lied about immigrants eating cats and dogs, they didn't know about any immigrants eating cats and dogs, so they believed him.
When he lied about tariffs and how they wouldn't raise prices, they didn't know anything about tariffs, so they believed him.
When he lied about prices going down, they know that's a lie, because they see it every day, and they're tired of the lies.
It's like watching the beginnings of a landslide (I've developed a fascination with geology in my old age and landslides are amazing)- first it's just a few small pebbles and dirt. Then big rocks, trees are falling, and a whole section of earth moves.
Has anyone polled voters on whether or not they watched Trump's latest TV speech and if they did how it was received? I watched about 1 minute of it before I knew it was going to make things worse for him. I doubt there is anything Trump can do to change his popularity over the next 10 months before the Congressional elections. Republicans need to get voters to turn out and I doubt that a very unpopular President, who is generally seen as the cause of at least four of economy's problems, affordability, tariffs, fewer jobs, and uncertainty, is going to do anything to improve Republican turnout. On the other hand, he seems to be everything he can to increase Democrat and anti-Trump Independent turnout.
Regarding the "speech" I think everyone is missing a massive thing: what the hell was he saying? Everyone is so focused on treating it like it was a normal pitch in support of his policies/the economy. But what the hell did we just watch? There was no coherence in the words themselves, his literal sentences half the time. Prices good, prices bad, Biden bad inflation, drug prices 600% off, WARRIOR DIVIDENDS, tariffs!
How could he possibly have put together a coherent political message across an entire speech? Sure it's not likely to help because the economy is actually shit so Trump shouting ECONOMY GOOD is a middle finger to real people and they'll notice that.... but more than anything IT SIMPLY IMPOSSIBLE for it to be helpful for you when one knows what the hell you're even saying!
We need polling on what likely voters think of their own congressperson, their party in congress, and congress in general to compare to Trump's approval ratings. Or are we confident that the old story of "love my own, hate the whole" is a fair assumption?
I don't think the people who voted for him are tired of the lies, or maybe they simply don't care. They like a president that does something. Another way to improve his polling is to find a common enemy to pick on. He's done that this week with the Venezualan sanctioned boats blockade, the new ban on transgender treatments for minors, and now stopping the green card lottery after the Brown/MIT shootings. Many who voted for him don't vote pocketbook, they vote ideology. I am betting his overall approval ticks up.
With respect, the political scientist Jonathan Bernstein writes this "I keep going back to it, but it’s simply true: The biggest thing by far in who people support in presidential general elections is party, and the second-biggest thing is how happy or unhappy people are with how the current president is doing, mostly (but not entirely) on the economy and war or peace. Everything else combined – campaign ads, debates, issues, etc. – is a poor third. Which means that candidate characteristics overall only have a minor effect on vote choice, and age is only one candidate characteristic.
I know: It often feels as if we’re choosing based on other things. But almost always what’s actually happening is that we make our choice based on party, and then discover that we actually think that, say, Richard Nixon is charming or Jimmy Carter is charismatic.1 Or we’ll pick a trait that goes with our favorite candidate, even if we’ve never thought of it before, and decide that it’s not only the important one but the one on which we based our decision. As in when people claimed to support George W. Bush because he would be more fun to have a beer with. It’s not that we’re trying to lie; it’s just how our political culture works on us." More at https://goodpoliticsbadpolitics.substack.com/
In the round, a big majority of Americans favor a President based on their experience of a growing or at least stable prosperity and absence of war. The Culture War issues you cite are generally only of interest to perhaps less than 20% of voters and their partisanship is pretty much fixed.
Yes, and Trump's personal morbidity works strongly against him. His obsession with owning the news cycle, firing off reactive executive orders and commenting on social media about this, that and every little thing makes him a ubiquitous control figure. So, the corollary of this, quite naturally, is that voters hold him accountable for every lie and idle brag.
It's as if he's the drunk at the end of the bar boasting about how he could do 50 one-armed push-ups and the other weary tavern patrons are saying, put up or shut up.
But he'll never shut up. He can't.
I've always said that once the MAGA's hands reach the level of third-degree burn, they will finally remove them from the hot stove.
Some seem to be getting there.
The thing with even the strongest MAGA supporters is they KNOW HE LIES ALL THE TIME.
But MAGAs believe the lies because their cult leader tells them that he knows what they want even more than they do themselves!
When he lied about immigrants eating cats and dogs, they didn't know about any immigrants eating cats and dogs, so they believed him.
When he lied about tariffs and how they wouldn't raise prices, they didn't know anything about tariffs, so they believed him.
When he lied about prices going down, they know that's a lie, because they see it every day, and they're tired of the lies.
It's like watching the beginnings of a landslide (I've developed a fascination with geology in my old age and landslides are amazing)- first it's just a few small pebbles and dirt. Then big rocks, trees are falling, and a whole section of earth moves.
I'm hoping we might see a landslide in 2026.