But perhaps most surprisingly, there are real signs that the Trump base is leaving him on the coronavirus issue.
Trump’s numbers look even worse when you examine where he is with the groups that make up that base: whites without college degrees and rural voters.
Among whites without a college degree, Trump’s approval rating of the coronavirus is an average of the ABC News / Ipsos and Quinnipiac surveys at just 50%. That matches their disapproval rating. In other words, Trump is not doing better than even among what is supposed to be a core group.
The numbers are not better for him among rural voters. In an average of the ABC News / Ipsos and Quinnipiac polls, their approval rating is 48% among rural voters. Their disapproval is 50%. Once again, you want to raise the score with base groups that voted for you by around 30 points in 2016. Trump is only running even here.
Now, there was no reason it had to be this way for Trump. In early April, Trump was getting good grades from all of these groups at his base.
He was averaging a 90% approval rating in the ABC News / Ipsos and Quinnipiac University polls when it came to his coronavirus performance.
I was in the 1960s with both whites without a college degree and rural voters in both polls.
What we have seen is that his base is clearly running away with him because they judge that his performance in the last months was negative.
The big question with a fall election is whether these voters are simply saying they disapprove of Trump for the coronavirus but are still going to vote for him.
Certainly, there are some members of his base who will never vote for former Vice President Joe Biden, even though they dislike Trump’s handling of the coronavirus.
Still, there are signs that Trump’s coronavirus performance is hurting him even against Biden.
Similarly, Trump climbed 21 points with rural voters in Quinnipiac’s poll. That sounds a lot like a poll average.
Overall, these may seem like big margins, but they’re not as close as Trump did in 2016.
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