Bulwark Takes - Trump’s Poll Numbers Are in the Toilet

Episode Date: February 21, 2025

Sarah Longwell and JVL discuss Trump's recent poll numbers that show Trump's approval rating is falling fast and how the economy might be Trump's weakness now that he is in charge.

Now at Verizon, we're locking in low prices for three years, guaranteed, on MyPlan. And you can get a single line for just $45 a month when you switch and bring your phone. That's our best price ever on Unlimited Welcome, with autopay plus taxes and fees, guaranteed for three years. Because at Verizon, we got you. Visit your local DC Verizon store today. $20 monthly promo credits apply over 36 months with a new line on Unlimited Welcome. In times of congestion, Unlimited 5G and 4G LTE may be temporarily slower than other traffic. Domestic data roaming at 2G speeds. Price guarantee applies to then current base monthly rate. Additional terms and conditions

apply. Hey, everyone. Sarah Longwell here, publisher of The Bulwark, and I am joined by my best friend, JVL. What's up, my man? Hey, hey. We were just talking about something else, and as is our want, we decided we should jump on and talk to you guys about what we were talking about, which is the fact that it's possible, and JBL is my go-to for if there's ever any schadenfreude. If there's ever any different polls that have come out recently that all show Trump his approval rating dropping. Now Trump entered his second term relatively popular for him, relatively popular for him, which was somewhere around 8% like net 8% approval according to FiveThirtyEight's tracker. In raw numbers, that was roughly 50% approve, 42% disapprove, with the rest unsure.

So while this is historically low compared to past presidents' approval at the onset of their term, this is like, for example, Gallup had Obama at 68% approval when he entered office. Biden, H.W. and Clinton all had about 60% approval. So Trump at 50% is not great. However, for a guy who lives underwater, it is better than he's done. But just four weeks into his term, Trump's approval rating is dropping. It's falling fast. Let's listen.

Last day in change has been the worst day of polling for Donald Trump during his entire second term in office. What am I talking about here? Take a look at Trump's net approval rating. CNN, you see it on this side of the screen. Minus five. Gallup, minus six. Ipsos, minus seven.

Quinnipiac, minus four. Negative, negative, negative, negative negative negative negative underwater underwater underwater underwater these four polls all of them tell a consistent story and that is Trump is on the negative side of the ledger his net approval is negative he is underwater like the Little Mermaid all right what are the changes since the beginning of his term oh January right all right so we don't have a CNN poll to compare, but we do have the other three pollsters that we can look at. Trump's net approval rate and the change since January.

Look at this. Gallup, down five points. Quinnipiac, down seven points. Ipsos, down 13 points. I don't know about you. I think Harry Enten seems as happy as we are about this drop in his poll numbers. He's like Ursula, sing for me!

Underwater like the Little Mermaid. Do you think he practiced that in the mirror this morning? Yeah, that was, boy, Harry had his Wheaties. You know, let me just say, first of all, Trump was more popular for the last month than he's ever been in his political career, more so than at the start of his first term in 2017. With everything, with the million dead from COVID, with the insurrection, with the convictions, with the indictments, with the Arnold Palmer penis, with all of those things. I could not understand why Trump was more popular than he had ever been. But you and I had a little, we had a little tiff yesterday during next level. And it was me just, you know, saying some very frank and

unguarded things about voters. And in large part, this was driven by the fact that the polls hadn't moved yet. And so we were fighting about was me saying, you saying the voters didn't vote for this. I'm abstracting this literally, but I think the crux of it was you thought the voters didn't vote for what they're getting from Trump. And I was saying, I think they did. I think this is what they knew. And in part, that was driven by the fact that he's been in our life for eight like, you know, I'm going to solve Ukraine with peace on day one. Prices will go down on day two. That I did not understand why his approval was higher than it had ever been and hadn't started moving.

And now, lo and behold, they're moving. Now, would it? Sarah. Sarah. Friend. Buddy. Best friend. Best friend. it Sarah Sarah friend buddy friend best friend if I told you that these polls were conducted by Ann Selzer would that change your mood look man I I think Ann I think everybody deserves an outlier I know Tim can't hear her name I know I know I'm not I don't mean to be throwing shade I'm just I'm just saying uh so what do you make of it? So I'm, I'm sitting here thinking Sarah's always right.

Sarah's vindicated. I would love for that to be true. I'm not positive that it is. I think, I think a couple things are happening and I want to get into one of them because it's actually at the center of another debate you and I've had for a long time. Because one of the most interesting things is the fact that Trump's approval rating on the economy is as low as it's ever been. So Trump is often has low approval ratings. He's almost always underwater. But the one place he tends to do better than everywhere else is on the economy. And I have been sitting here, you know, listening to voters and the focus groups. Now, granted,

the groups I've been really focused on since the election have been these Biden to Trump voters. And, you know, they've been relatively, you know, I wouldn't say they're not all full steam ahead. You hear, you know, on the immigration, you know, pod that I did with our boy Adrian, you know, we kind of, the voters were like kind of in two camps. They were the ones who were like, yep, deport them all. He's doing something. Thank God he's doing something about it. Sorry about it if we, you know, catch a few Puerto Ricans on the way out. That was, you know, catch a few Puerto Ricans on the way out. That was, you know, our bad. Whereas, but then there's the other group that was kind of like,

you know, I just thought he was going to deport criminals, but he's deporting like my neighbors and the guy who was around for 20 years who just went to his job every day and never broke the law. And so I'm nervous about what's happening. And so I think that embedded in some of these numbers are people who voted for him because they're like, well, I wanted him to lower costs. That's what I want right away, lower costs. And, you know, and I want him to do some of the things like, OK, I'm OK with deporting criminals, but they're seeing that he's going further than they anticipated.

Now, to be fair to Trump, I think he was pretty clear he was going to do more than deport just criminals. But voters, and this is a point that I try to make often, they don't always catch all this, right? There's a lot of self-delusion in what people do. That's such a kind way of saying it. Yeah. People don't always catch all of this. Well, look, I just think people say they tell themselves what they want to hear. They want to hear that he's going to deport criminals because that's what they think

sounds reasonable, and they throw out the rest. But of course, he's doing the rest. But this—I want to go back to this economic piece, because the drop is in part happening because people don't like Trump's handling of the economy. Listen to this clip. One of Donald Trump's great strengths during the 2024 campaign of the economy. Listen to this clip. One of Donald Trump's great strengths during the 2024 campaign was the economy, the idea that Donald Trump could fix the economy.

This was one of Donald Trump's great strengths. Now it's one of his great weaknesses. What am I talking about? Trump's net approval rating. You go back to his first term, February 2017, Ipsos, he was at plus 16 points on his net approval. Quinnipiac, plus six. Look at where he is now in Ipsos. He's eight points underwater on the economy. Quinnipiac, four points under

on the economy. I honestly never thought I'd see the day in which Donald Trump would be polling so poor on the economy, but that day is here. As I said last week, inflation ate the Joe Biden presidency alive, and right now it is very much the case that Donald Trump is in danger of inflation eating his presidency alive because his net approval ratings on the economy are underwater. OK, so here's where I want to do a very cautious maybe Sarah was right. And here it is. It's on this idea that you and I have argued for a long time about the health of the macro economy. And I was saying like, oh, because you're like, why are all these voters blaming Biden? The economy is actually good.

It's not fair. And you can correct me if I'm wrong, but you might have said or your contention was that when Trump's in office, a whole bunch of people are going to suddenly say, oh, look, the economy is great. Like they would suddenly recognize that it was great. But I think it's possible that actually the consternation about the economy was very real and Donald Trump's lack of attention to it, it's sort of like, maybe not exactly the same, but like the way that Joe Biden

maybe focused on some things that were not at the top of people's priority list hurt him a great deal. Similarly, Donald Trump's focus on Doge and sort of dismantling the government. There's a lot of people who are like, yes, go, go, go. But there was a whole bunch of other Trump voters who are not big MAGA types, who are not particularly ideological, who are like, no, bro, I just want you to do something about the economy. And they're impatient types of voters. And so I feel like they're the ones saying he's not even doing anything about the economy. In fact, nothing's getting better.

Eggs are even more expensive, although that's part of the bird flu. But like... Eight dollars. Eight dollars. For the first time in American history, we have eight dollar eggs as of today. But what do you make of this theory of mine, potentially, that actually voters still do view the economy as negative and it's starting to hurt Trump? I think that's possible. And this is why, again, seeing his numbers move from where they've been over the last month is very, very encouraging. Today at CPAC, J.D. Vance did some justifying of Trump's record and about prices and inflation and tried blaming Joe

Biden and said, you know, I mean, they, you know, it was such a disaster. They wrecked the economy so fast. Anybody can break, anybody can wreck things quickly, but it takes time to fix them. And I just thought to myself, that's what you say when you're losing. Yes. Right. That's, that's loser talk. And it's, it's also, of course, projection because what the Trump administration is doing is absolutely wrecking the federal government, and they're doing it very quickly.

It would take time to actually cut the government and make it more efficient in reasonable ways, but that's beside the point. If J.D. Vance has to say that at CPAC, then it means that there are some people out there who are going, wait a minute, why aren't prices down? And I think we, by which I mean every person in America with two eyes to see and two ears to hear, ought to be asking 15 times a day, why aren't prices lower? Why aren't prices lower? Because here's the secret. Prices can't go

lower. Deflation is not a thing. If deflation hits, it's actually very bad for the macro economy, and we will all be in much worse shape than we are now. And so maybe if voters are really going to be responsive to this, and they're going to be stuck in that same mode that they were with Biden, it'd be great if we could use that as a club to drive Trump's popularity down. Yeah. And look, I think Trump's in a tough spot here in the sense that if the numbers are already starting to go down, because actually it's happening sooner than I thought it would. Like, I really did think there's going to need be, you're gonna, it's gonna take a while

for the negative personal consequences of a lot of what they're doing to sink in. But if I had to guess from these numbers right now, it's actually a frustration with Trump's lack of focus on the economy, that he's not talking about that, that he's not explaining to people, hey, here's what I'm gonna do to lower prices. And in fact, what they're having to say is,

cause I saw Elon Musk said this, it's like, nope, it's probably going to get harder before it gets better. Okay, that is not a good message for people. They will not like that. And the more that he, number one, the further he gets away from Joe Biden being president, the harder it gets to say, this is Joe Biden's economy, we're just trying to fix it, right? I mean, that's one piece of it. You would agree with that, right? That like. Yeah, especially because he's not actually doing anything to fix it. Right.

It's the other thing. I mean, there is again, I don't think there's anything to be to be really fixed, but he's spending all of his time trying to sell out Ukraine. And so this is where I do think, you know, so where do things go south for Biden? They went south starting the summer of 2021. Afghanistan. And it was Afghanistan, which was coincidental with the first warning signs of inflation. And Delta, the Delta resurgence.

And the Delta resurgence, right. If, again, I do not want to say, like, maybe Americans will care about Ukraine, because I think they probably won't. But if that's happening at the same time, it looks like Trump is spending all of his time taunting Vladimir Zelensky and sucking up to Putin when people are pissed about the price of eggs. Maybe that's a one-two combination which can inflict some political pain on him and which people ought to try to use to inflict political pain on him. Yeah. And I don't know, you know, just thinking about Biden and that bad summer in 2021, he never really recovered from that. Never. Never recovered from it. Right. And so I wonder if we're starting to – I just, you see public opinion moving so much faster than it used to. And even if the economy stays the same, but certainly if it gets worse, Trump can do all the Doge stuff and all the deportations. I'm not sure that it will.

And I guess this is the part where I want to be like, was I, come on, man, was I right? Was I right that people are genuinely feeling pain in this economy and that it ate up Biden and now it's going to eat up Trump? I, uh, look, I never said you were wrong about that. What are you talking about? I said that people, people believe things that weren't true and they may still be believing things that aren't true. Maybe it's true.

It isn't true. Maybe it's true. It isn't true. The American economy, literally, somebody posted this today, a, you know, April 2024 Wall Street Journal headline, American economy, the envy of the world. Like, it's, that's just the case. Like, you know, everything is relative. We have the best economy in the world right now. And we still have incredibly low unemployment and good wage growth. And could it be better? Sure. But everything can always be better. We live in a very, very

tight economic system with very little slack in it. Most people who are anywhere from even the upper middle class down are sort of living paycheck to paycheck ish and that's true on the good times and in the bad times and that's why i i just never i was never willing to give people credence for for saying as they did all through the biden presidency things are worse now than they were in 2009 during the Great Recession, which is just fucking cockamamie. And, but at least look, if they're going to be consistently wrong and they'll be wrong during Trump too,

I'm in favor of it. I can, I'll take that. You'll take that. I'll take it. I'll take it. And, and this is where I would say, this is a real Sarah's right, is that this would be a sign that people didn't think they were voting for what Trump is doing.

I think I think that is right. I think and here's the thing that I know, right, voting coalition that are there for the deportations or there for Doge or because they like Musk or they like Trump just owning the libs and making people cry. But there's a whole other group of voters. And I think those are the ones you're seeing reflected in these numbers who are just like, which one of these guys do I think is going to do better to bring prices down for me or make my life more affordable? And Joe Biden's not doing it.

So I'm going to take a flyer on the other guy. And a month in, they're going, this guy's not even talking about the economy and nothing's getting better. Not talking about it at all, right? Yeah. He's talking about, well, we're going to get rid of the FAA people after we've had all these plane crashes. And we're going to fire a bunch of veterans who work at the IRS and in the, you know, the ag department. And I'm going to send my people out to Saudi Arabia to meet with Vladimir Putin's people. I mean, this is not a guy who is focused on the things happening to average everyday Americans. And I think, so 100% that's right.

And I think as we see, you know, there's not an election until 2026. But Trump is going to look at two things. And you see Republicans, the reason they're so afraid of him, and I think one of the reasons the Democrats have been so paralyzed is that him winning the popular vote was a shock to people. And I think as, and so, you know, they're claiming some enormous, majestic, king-like mandate, when of course Donald Trump won by a number that was far less than Joe Biden won when he won in 2020. Far less than Hillary Clinton's majority in 2016. But look, he won the popular vote. But I think that if you start to see his approval ratings sink early, that is the only other metric he really cares about is the stock market. That's like the only other thing he takes is like a relevant poll, his approval ratings in

the stock market. So I think we should all take good news where we can get it. And I think his approval ratings going down this early as opposed to going up can start to send a signal to Republican lawmakers that this guy, everything's not inevitable. They don't have to go along with everything. The mandate's not as big as they're acting like, I think. Yeah. It'd be nice if we could get these numbers in front of the Senate as they're acting like, I think. Yeah, it'd be nice if we get these numbers in front of the Senate before they vote to confirm Kash Patel. But, you know. Yeah, no, it is good news. I am cautiously optimistic. And if we're sitting

here next week with another bunch of numbers that confirm or show the slide continuing, then that'll be really good news. And that will be something we can start to work with. All right, buddy. Well, here's to good news, something we get so little of these days. Thanks for jumping on and talking about the poll numbers with me. See you tomorrow on The Secret Podcast. I'll see you there, buddy.