Bulwark Takes - 10 Points Down! New Poll Is A Disaster For Trump

Episode Date: April 17, 2025

Sarah Longwell and JVL discuss new polling showing Trump’s declining support among Republicans as voters blame him for economic instability caused by his tariffs and broken promises.

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Yeah. So let me just this is the latest YouGov poll. Right. So we're going to we're going to compare it to itself. But it has Donald Trump at minus 10 approval. So 42 percent approve, 52 percent disapprove. And that is two points worse than last week when he had a 43 percent approve and a 51 percent disapprove. And so here's the thing. This is the trend that we've been seeing since Inauguration Day. Right.

Trump started with a relatively high approval compared to his first term, though not compared to other presidents in their first term, just compared to himself. But it's been declining pretty much ever since consistently. And I talked about this with Bill a little bit. One of the things that I like is it's not dropping like a stone over one thing, because when that happens, it bounces back, right? This is sort of just a slow erosion, as I think people increasingly become aware that the, you remember how I would talk to you and say in the focus groups, a lot of people were like, you know, I think Trump's really calmed down. Or I think he's changed. I do remember that. I think, you know, he's mellowed. He's mellowed. And I was just like, we're not living in the same universe. But there were people tell themselves these stories. Right.

I think that the assassination attempt really, really changed who he is. No. And so I guess people are slowly experiencing the negative personal consequences specifically related to the economy. And a lot of those negative personal consequences aren't even, it's not even the impact of tariffs yet. It is simply that Donald Trump made a lot of promises, like I'm going to lower grocery prices day one. A vote for Trump means your groceries will be cheaper. It'll also bring your grocery bill way down.

I have more complaints on grocery. The word grocery, you know, it's sort of simple word, but it sort of means like everything you eat. The stomach is speaking. It always does. Well, that has not happened. Not even a little bit. And people are like, not only are things not going down. And this was always Trump was always setting himself up for this right now.

To be fair, making promises, you know, you can't keep can help you get elected. It helped him get elected. However, if you know anything about inflation, you know that Trump could not walk in and lower prices. And so instead, he has focused on things he can control because he cannot control these, like on immigration, where he has more control. But on the economy people just don't think he's doing what he said he was going to do and the this you go of poll um and then you can go through uh the crosstabs but like actually well maybe you want to go this is what you're getting at but the thing that jumped out at me was actually that part of where he is slipping

is in the south republicans okay sorry go ahead sorry, you go ahead. Set this up. Yeah. So last week in YouGov, his approval among self-identified Republicans was 90 to 8, a plus 82. This week, it's 85 to 12, plus 72. So he dropped 10 points in a week with Republicans. And that, to me, is the most important finding in the entire thing. Because once people start getting off the bus, I think maybe they give themselves permission to stay off the bus, right? That hardest thing is to get off that first step off the bus where you say,

yeah, I don't know, this doesn't look good, right? And then once you've done that, you have space to say, yeah, this is not good. This guy's doing a bad job, right? And once he starts losing the base, that's his Alamo, right? I mean, he feels like as long as he has his people with him, he can do anything. Yeah, I mean, I don't know how much this is the base or is this i would suspect so i would say the 10 point drop is i think a clear tariff signal

right these are people who are like tariffs are bad and so like part of his not necessarily base but certainly his voting coalition so people who vote for him there's a lot of people in there who are small business owners or otherwise have a job related to supply chains and international trade. And you hear this in the groups. When I listen to people, people say like, well, I run a small company or I work for a small company that does X, Y, Z, and we get our stuff from China or we get this from so-and-so place. And like those are real people who participate in the economy. And those are people who thought Donald Trump by cutting regulation would ultimately be good for them. And so it, I'm not sure if these are like MAGA MAGA people so much as they're the kind of like, or the or the people who are in finance. I mean, you hear a lot of the stories

that the Wall Street Journal picks up or Financial Times is about people who are sort of casual Trump voters because they think Trump is going to be good for stocks and we're going to have a rip roaring economy. And so his injections of uncertainty are injecting them with uncertainty. And so I think that's where this erosion is coming from. Well, he did not campaign on blowing up the global financial system. He didn't. So although he campaigned on tariffs, which people should have understood would mean anyway, unimportant. I want to get to the economy stuff, because this is this has long been your position that Trump had to have the economy without a strong economy in his back, he would really be vulnerable. So I want to go through four crosstabs here. The first is just the percentage

of people who say the economy is getting worse. As Biden left office, it was 37%. Today, it's 52%. So a plus 50, the flat majority of Americans say the economy is getting worse. Trump's approval on his handling of jobs and the economy, as the question is phrased, he's now at minus seven net, which is very, very bad for him. His handling of foreign trade, minus 17 net and tariffs themselves just as a standalone tariffs, good or bad, minus 10. No, people don't like tariffs. In fact, 76% of Americans think that Trump's recent tariffs will increase the price of goods they buy. 44% expect prices will increase a lot and 31% expect they will increase a little. But when people already thought prices were too high, like this is why they fired Joe Biden, even people who think price is going up a little for them, that is like,

no, I can't afford for them to go. His was going to lower them. That's what he told me. He told me he was going to lower them. And I say this a lot, but it's just worth repeating that, like when it comes to Trump, his central mythology with voters is the idea that he is a businessman and that he can run the economy. And it is the number one thing he was hired to do. Like, all of the other things that we talk about at the most basic level, people fire Joe Biden because they were mad about the high prices. They were mad about inflation. And those people are still mad about inflation. Like they're not going to get unmad a lot of these swingier voters. And so, you know, I think a lot of people want to it's tough with Trump just because like Trump,

as much as we talk about, you know, his machinations about a third term, this guy's a lame duck president. And so how much to his approval? Yeah. How much does approval ratings really matter? You know, just real quick. I keep meaning to say this to you, but on the third term thing, like the second that Obama tweets, oh, are we doing third terms? Like the third term thing is kind of over. Let's table that because that's a longer discussion. I think this is a like an escape fantasy that a lot of a lot of people in our world have like oh well we get to just bring michael jordan off the bench

um for a couple reasons i think that's not gonna work but i want to i want to have one more crosstab here that is very important for your thesis yeah um 34 asked about how is the stock market performing uh the plurality say poor 34 say poor this is against 21 saying good but the most important number here is who is responsible for the stock market right now 67 say trump and so that suggests a level of willingness to assign culpability among a lot of voters. Now, of course, some of those people are going to be the people who say it's good, right? 21% say it's good. I'm sure some of them also give Trump credit for that. But if people are going to be willing to say he's responsible for stuff and the facts on the ground start going really bad, they're already going quite bad, but they could go really bad.

And I want to pivot to talking about Paul Krugman and the possibility of a financial actual crisis in a minute. That does make him really vulnerable, doesn't it? Yeah, I mean, I guess, what do you mean by vulnerable? But like, does it continue to really increase his unpopularity? Yes, that's what I meant. Yes, I definitely think so. And what about this point about Trump owning the economy? You know, they had done everything they can to say, like, Joe Biden left us this mess, whatever. But Donald Trump,

this is his plan. And he has, he has hammered it so hard. And as people have gone out and defended it, there is just no, this isn't like a fight over the house budget, where it's a little bit like a jump ball on who gets blamed when the government shuts down. No, voters know, Trump wants to do this Trump campaign on remaking the economy this is what jd vance talks about like people get it uh that this is him and so for better or worse he's gonna own it uh and he cannot blame it on joe biden it's gonna be for worse uh yesterday Today, Bloomberg, noted lib, never Trump, Bloomberg, had an editorial warning that there is a very real chance of getting an actual financial crisis, which is different from financial crisis is not a recession, right? A financial crisis is something very, very different, right? You know, recession is a chronic illness. A financial crisis is catching a virus which can kill you. And they are looking around a lot of data suggesting that there are a bunch of firms that are over levered. like with because we have a debt problem coming and the bond market is freaking out and the

dollar is weakening, that we're going to be in a situation where a bunch of firms aren't going to be able to make good on their debts. And we're going to have some collapse as lenders go looking to recruit costs. And that if this happens, the federal government is what has to backstop financial crises. So when financial crises happen, it is always the federal government which has to backstop financial crises. So when financial crises happen, it is always the federal government which has to stop it. And the problem is that this government

is A, staffed by a bunch of idiots who don't know what they're doing, but B, there are, and Bloomberg lays them out, there are a bunch of things that a government can do ahead of time to prepare for a financial crisis. Sort of, you know, husbanding funds and looking to see where the leverage vulnerabilities

are among firms. And that the problem is that the Trump administration is in the process of firing 20% of regulatory staff. So, I mean, we could get in addition to just the general like, hey, inflation is high and we're in a bear market and growth goes negative and we're in a recession. We could get all of that and then we could get an actual real deal crisis on top of it. If this happens, just dream with me for a minute. Do you really what do you think his approval floor is 32 world 32 yeah so he's only 10 points away from that floor well you know this is and you know what i have i have

put 32 as kind of my magic number that's my marker of what i think we need to get him to in order to both have people stop being like he could run for a third term because everybody will just be like this guy's so unpopular he would never run for a third term number one uh number two i think that 32 is the point at which you get at least swing state republicans to start walking away right like it's really hard to get republicans to walk away and i would not bet lunch money on them walking away without Trump falling into like a pretty cataclysmic place. And so because even at 32%, that means you control a majority of and he does write every primary. And so any Republican who's afraid of being primaried by him or needs his endorsement

in a primary, they're not going to walk away from him. But there's a different subset of people who do start, I think, to get louder at that point because they feel like people are on their side. Yeah. Let me tell you why I think that would be so important, because I think that would stop the institutional slide into collaboration. Totally. institutional slide into collaboration totally so if you're a law firm or a college or a tech company or research any any number of places which are trying to be intimidated by trump into doing what he wants at 30 you know already at 42 but once you get into the 30s yeah and the god forbid you hit the low 30s the mid 30 30s, it becomes much easier to say, go ahead, bro, make my day.

Yeah. And also, I think it becomes much more incentivized to bring people out on the streets to protest the regime. And so this nascent protest movement, which has already started with the hands off and the people showing up by tens of thousands for Bernie and AOC. I think that all grows and becomes bolder as we move into the 2026 cycle. And look, I mean, what has happened in North Carolina with the Supreme Court trying to steal a seat down there and steal an election? That can still happen at the red state level here and there. But you do get to the possibility that the wave in 2026 is so big that even shenanigans can't stop it. And at that point, some institutional power within the federal government accrues to the pro-democracy movement.

I really agree with that. And I think this is why I was arguing yesterday on TNL that I think Harvard is important, because you sort of need to start turning the corner into people fighting back and not just rolling over. And I do think, like, the reason that I've always believed that the approval numbers still really matter is that I think that the reason that people are rolling over is because people were shocked that Trump won the popular vote and they felt like he had a popular mandate. talk about their concern over tariffs, like Trump voting people. What you don't, though, get is people are upset and nervous, but they're not necessarily like, boy, I wish I'd voted for Kamala Harris. Right. And so some of this, too, is like Dems have to figure out both how to not just make Trump unpopular, but how to make themselves more popular. And so and I think there's they've become like it started starting to creep up a little bit in some of this polling, like in the crosstabs. There's actually

the Morning Consult poll that is tracking them. The average voter is starting to hold a more positive than negative view of Democrats in Congress, so about 47 to 46 percent. And it leaves them more popular than Republicans in Congress, whose favorability ratings are now 10 percent underwater. Now, I think that a lot of where you're going to see Democrats bounce back is while you have when you have more Cory Bookers and you have more protests and there's more visible Democratic pushback. Again, something that I think increases as Trump becomes increasingly unpopular and they feel like they have momentum or the ability to have people on their side um you know that help that that sort of brings that number like democrats were super super low in part because their own people right democratic voters are mad at them for not doing enough and so once they're back uh to a respectable place i think they can be a more effective opposition party yeah this is you got to make general zod bleed that's a

that's a comic book thing i wouldn't expect you to understand it superman right sit close close very good we're gonna end on that guys uh this is a rare sunny podcast with me and sarah i can't believe this we came to you with good news about how the fight is kind of working. There's an opening. There's a chink in the armor. There's one of the scales on the big orange dragon's belly has fallen off and exposed his soft underside.

So, guys, hit like, hit subscribe. Maybe we'll have more good news someday. I don't know. Good luck, America.