Support for Trump plummets after storm

President Donald Trump’s opinion figures are plummeting after the assault on Capitol Hill. Here he goes down the stairs before a performance in Texas on Tuesday.Image: Delcia Lopez / The Monitor via AP / TT

Over the past week, after chaos on Capitol Hill in Washington DC, the outgoing president’s popularity has plummeted.

By comparison, the last five presidents before Trump had at least half the approval of the population in similar polls when they said goodbye to the White House.

These are very low numbers, but not very surprising, says Erik Åsard, an American expert and emeritus professor of American studies at Uppsala University. Trump has always had unusually low approval from the people.

– It is often said that the president who is around 40 in these measures is very low, and that if you are below 40 it is catastrophically bad.

As Åsard sees, the steep decline reflects what happened in Washington. The president summoned a crowd to march against Congress, after which they invaded and clashed with law enforcement. Five people were killed in the riots and Trump has been brought before the Supreme Court for the second time.

While much of what Donald Trump has said and done has drawn huge reactions, it has rarely been reflected in opinion polls.

– He has had surprisingly stable numbers throughout the presidency and has been almost constantly between 40 and 43 percent regardless of what he has done. This is largely due to the fact that he has had great support from his own base, which is completely set up for him, says Erik Åsard.

But the fact is, the latest polls are not the worst during Trump’s term, as the numbers were at an all-time low relative to other presidents as early as their first year. It reached the lowest level so far in December 2017, although it does not differ by many percentage points from the current figures.

At the time, the large-scale investigation into contacts between Trump’s election campaign staff and Russia was still raging. Trump had also come out to defend an Alabama senatorial candidate who was accused of sexual assault. From a purely political point of view, the president received his grand reform with tax cuts during the same month.

Even a few months earlier, in August, public support waned and sniffed at a similar level. At the time, right-wing extremists and the white power milieu had gathered for a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and a man killed a woman who was pushing her way through the counter-protesters. Trump ran into strong opposition when he initially condemned the violence “from both sides.”

In a few days, Trump will cease to be president of the United States, but it will still matter how much support he has among voters.

– If the numbers continue to decline or remain low, it will be easier for Republicans to break free of their control. It has had the whole party in an iron fist, rather it has been the Trump Party, says Erik Åsard.

– It will be easier for Republicans who doubt or have not been part of his politics 100 percent to distance himself from him if he is so unpopular.

TT: Can you see from the polls that there is a limit to what Americans tolerate from their president?

– In that case, it is too late to show it, it must be said. There are many things he has done, said and done that have not had the same reaction. So you probably shouldn’t deduct too large gears.