Poll: 48 percent approve of President-elect Trump, only 41 disapprove, as Trump named Time’s Man of the Year
President-elect Donald Trump appears to be getting off on the right foot with the American people in the latest Marist poll taken Dec. 5, finding that 48 percent of registered voters approve of Trump’s handling of his job during the presidential transition, including 86 percent of Republicans, 38 percent of independents and 18 percent of Democrats. Only 41 percent disapprove and 12 percent are undecided.
That is in stark contrast to President Joe Biden’s current dismal approval rating, with just 42 percent approving and 51 percent disapproving. That’s better than usual when these polls are taken for Biden, with his average approval rating at 39 percent and disapproval at 56 percent, according to the latest average compiled by Realclearpolling.com.
Historically, that’s about as good as Trump has ever done vis a vis approval. In 2017, as president, his approval averaged 40.5 percent, in 2018 it rose to 42.5 percent, in 2019 it rose to 43.4 percent and 2020 it was at 44.4 percent. In other words, Trump is more popular than ever.
Almost on cue, now it has been revealed that Trump is once again being named Time magazine’s Man of the Year for 2024. Certainly, that is true. After being left for politically dead in 2021, Trump rallied back, beat back multiple attempts to imprison him, won 49 out of 50 states in the 2020 Republican Party presidential primaries, survived two assassination attempts and overcame the incumbency advantage to defeat Vice President Kamala Harris in the Nov. 2024 election in convincing fashion, the first Republican win the national popular vote since George W. Bush in 2004.
At least for the moment, the mood of the country has shifted towards Trump, even as millions of Americans struggle with the outcome of the election, even if it is not too surprising to me and many analysts why it was 77 million Americans — who are no radicals — including tens of millions of women (45 percent), young people (43 percent), Hispanics (46 percent), Blacks (13 percent), union households (45 percent), independents (46 percent), Democrats (4 percent), according to the CNN exit poll. But exit polls only tell you who voted, but not necessarily why.
It would also be important to consider data published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and other agencies including the Bureau of Economic Analysis data that show inflation outpaced incomes through much of the Biden term of office, which similarly played a role in the defeats of Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush. Trump lost too in 2020, and the economy was a key factor that year, because the Covid recession economic lockdowns displaced millions of workers — 25 million jobs were lost in March 2020 although by November about 14 million of those jobs had been recovered.
Every election is a referendum on the incumbents. Every one of them.
In that context, we can begin to take stock of how all the groups of the political coalition were being negatively impacted by the policies we’ve been pursuing for the past four years including in the economy. For example, in 2021, the problem we had was production shortfalls from the Covid lockdowns. Not enough was done to boost energy and agriculture production and in the meantime, we printed an extra almost $3 trillion with more spending bills in 2021 after printing $4 trillion the year before for, plus interest rates were left at near-zero percent even as the inflation was ratcheting up. Production was not consciously increased to meet increasing demand and higher prices until after Russia invaded Ukraine in Feb. 2022, but by then consumer inflation had already reached 7.5 percent. These were consequential delays that weakened Biden’s economic message.
Additional policies allowing millions of people to come here illegally and stay — it was a record 8 million according to U.S. Customs and Border Patrol data — largely flooded Hispanic communities, leading to scarce housing, gang problems and consequent higher local crime rates, and led directly to Trump’s increased appeal among Hispanics in the election.
The U.S. has also visibly engaged in extremely dangerous foreign policies, most recently by greenlighting Ukraine to fire U.S. made missiles directly into Russia using U.S. satellite intelligence to guide them, leading to Russia to fire Mach 10 missiles back into Ukraine, defeating our missile defenses. Biden has not spoken to Putin the entire war. We had better relations during the Cold War, particularly following the Cuban Missile Crisis when Kennedy and Khruschev had a breakthrough with the first strategic arms reductions in Cuba and Turkey as the missiles were withdrawn that later led to breakthroughs by Nixon and Brezhnev with the Antiballistic Missile Treaty and the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty and later Reagan and Gorbachev with the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty and the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. The ongoing conflict, plus the push to put Ukraine, which is in direct conflict with Russia, into NATO, almost certainly risks a much wider war and nuclear conflict. Harris campaigned on keeping the fight going, whereas Trump alternately proposed to end the war and engage in peace talks.
On those three issues, the economy, immigration and the war in Ukraine, in polls leading up to the election, Trump consistently led Harris by double digits (usually about 10 points or more).
All of this made it more likely Trump would win, but not guaranteed. Incumbent parties in their first term regardless of the nominee usually win about 69 percent of the time. But during times of high inflation and/or recessions, the incumbents became more likely to succumb to defeat, as Biden and Harris discovered.
If Nikki Haley had been nominated, she might have benefited from those same anxieties among voters, however she was a very weak candidate, only winning 1 state to Trump’s 49, with Trump having the strongest showing by somebody who wasn’t a sitting president since Al Gore in 2000 when he won 50 states in the primary. In that context, as a former president, Trump was far and away the Republican who had the best chance to win by keeping his coalition from 2020 together.
This column the past four years had also repeatedly warned the administration and Congress that these economic and demographic trends were persistent, but also how prosecuting their political opponent in New York, Florida, Georgia and Washington, D.C. was extremely ill founded or that diversity, equity and inclusion’s (DEI) racial and gender hiring quotas clearly violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and as it turns out turn off more minority voters every day because they hate pandering but also because it feeds resentment, all of which was weakened Democrats’ political legitimacy and divided the country, undercutting their ability to win.
Democrats’ most fatal mistake in 2024 might have been by dumping a sitting president at the eleventh hour without any primary to replace him. As the sitting president, Biden might have had the greatest chance to win, but instead his campaign opted for an early debate with Trump to gauge Biden’s strength, with Biden flopping in the debate and withdrawing days later. He didn’t have to do that debate. 1952 and 1968 saw Democratic presidents forego reelection only for the incumbent party to be defeated fairly easily. This column also repeatedly warned in the months leading up to Biden’s departure that Democrats’ odds of winning might decrease significantly if he were replaced.
Again, elections are always a referendum on the incumbents. The circumstances that led to Trump’s win were entirely created by his opponents’ failure to maintain a functional majority as he acquired millions of additional votes including from traditional Democratic groups negatively impacted by Biden and Harris’ policies.
For example, Trump’s his continued success with union households, in which he won 45 percent (about 10 million votes) on the basis of his trade and tariff policies that Biden never rescinded were critical to his wins in the Rust Belt states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, as it was in 2016. Trump consistently spoke to working class voters and had the head of the Teamsters speak at the Republican convention, and later the Teamsters poll showed 59 percent of members were backing him in the election. Trump broadened the traditional Republican coalition, and it paid off.
Also worth noting in the CNN exit poll was Trump’s showing among those making under $30,000, where Trump garnered 46 percent of the vote. On less than $50,000, Trump garnered 49 percent of the vote. These were real keys in my opinion.
And now they present Trump with an opportunity, as the newly elected president, to begin to unite the country in 2025 and beyond and to keep expanding his coalition, by delivering on the promises he made in the campaign to get tough on trade, tough on the border, kill the inflation and to stabilize an international situation abroad and to keep the peace. In his first administration, the U.S. left the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty as the never ending Russiagate investigation made a better agreement with Russians on nuclear arms and Ukraine less likely.
Regardless of where we stood in the election, our prayers can still be with the new president, that he will be able to make good on his promise to pursue and achieve a peace agreement in Ukraine, and to avoid a much wider war.
In 2025, Trump will be starting with a clean slate and, with the bully pulpit at his disposal, the ability to speak directly to the American people, how he and his Republican successors fare will be determined by his actions and the success that his policies bring to the country, the economy and the people. Time is on Trump’s side, but it will pass quickly, and so he must act decisively. Good luck, Mr. President! Make it count.
Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.