While Presidents usually enter office with a positive rating by most of the public - obvious if you think about it since they were just elected - President-Elect trump’s ratings are dropping fast as inauguration day approaches. Fewer than half of U.S. voters approve of him.
Latest poll numbers
Multiple opinion surveys agree that his popularity is low and dropping. In particular, the January 10 Quinnipiac University national poll finds exiting President Obama with a 55% approval rating but incoming President Donald Trump’s performance so far is already disapproved of by 51% of American voters and he has only a 37% approval rating.
Further, only 34% say he will be a better President than Obama, while 52% are optimistic about the next four years.
All of Mr. Trump's personal ratings including honesty and intelligence have dropped since the last Quinnipiac poll on November 22, even though most still remain at or above 50%.
Why this matters to governing
Mr. Trump is not improving things with constant feuds. He attacked Civil Rights Icon Rep. John Lewis over the weekend. Today is a Federal holiday in the U.S., Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
While the Trump transition team keep insisting he has a great mandate from the voters, Republicans are becoming very concerned with his falling ratings and growing public opposition to his recent actions.
That translates to personal concerns about the next election cycle which is in two years for some and to dwindling support for President-Elect Trump’s agenda. Although Republicans have a majority in both houses of Congress, it is a bare majority in the Senate and if only two or three Republicans oppose drastic changes to existing laws they won’t pass.
Second thoughts
As the Republican Congress is moving to immediately revoke the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obama Care), many of the recently insured under the ACA are Trump voters in the critical mid-West industrial states which put candidate Trump over the top in the Electoral College, despite falling more than 2 million votes short in the election totals.
But while President-Elect Trump and a few Senators keep promising almost same day enactment of a great replacement health care system, there isn’t actually any widely accepted Republican plan, therefore millions of Trump voters face the possibility of losing their insurance since it can take months or years to work out all the complex details of a new health care insurance plan.
Gun control
Although many Trump voters are strongly in favor of the right to keep and bear arms (own guns), as the Second Amendment to the U.S. constitution guarantees, the latest news on the legislative front is surprising many. The Hearing Protection Act, which Trump insiders praise, seems innocuous until you read it and discover that it removes virtually all restrictions on purchase of Gun silencers (technically suppressors) which are currently almost impossible to legally buy or own.
Blame the mainstream media
It was no secret among experts that it would be virtually impossible to replace Obama care with a new set of laws and regulations which would let people keep the most popular provisions including a guarantee that those in their early 20s can stay on their parent’s insurance and that companies can’t deny coverage to those with pre-existing conditions, the mainstream media, especially TV campaign coverage failed to make this clear.
Another major hole in the TV coverage of what Trump policies would actually mean was the gun situation in the U.S. Although voters knew Trump wanted to block any additional restrictions on gun ownership such as requiring background checks for sales over the Internet or at gun shows, very few knew that he intended to remove many existing laws and regulations including the near total ban on silencers.
The great wall
Finally, the promised "fantastic wall" which Candidate Trump promised would be paid for by Mexico looks to initially cost U.S. tax payers $10 billion and Mexico may never pay.
