OPINION:
To paraphrase Mark Twain: Reports of President Trump’s political death “are greatly exaggerated.” Simply scanning approval ratings overlooks the many trends determining a president’s effectiveness and re-electability. Many of these favor Mr. Trump.
As his 100-day milestone passed, the president’s lagging approval ratings were frequently cited. Two major problems exist with this point-in-time comparative approach: the moment when it is taken and to what it is compared.
Considering the uniqueness of Mr. Trump’s campaign and presidency thus far, applying conventional measures to the unconventional is questionable. Rather than choosing just a single sample, an average over time offers a better view.
Rasmussen’s tracking polls of 1,500 likely voters provide 71 samples over Mr. Trump’s first 100 days. Averaging these, his approval and disapproval ratings are almost exactly balanced: Approval, 49.6 percent; disapproval, 50.3 percent.
Importantly, Mr. Trump’s first day approval rating was not wildly high (56-44 percent) — though certainly higher than his favorability rating during the campaign. Mr. Trump won the election with 46.1 percent of the popular vote, therefore losing 53.9 percent. Compared to the benchmark that elected him, Mr. Trump’s Rasmussen 100-day average handily beats it.
However, this still understates the president’s current standing. While 53.9 percent of November’s electorate did not vote for Mr. Trump, not all voted for a candidate who could have beaten him. Hillary Clinton won more popular votes, yet still only received 48.2 percent. Again, Mr. Trump’s first 100-day average is above that, too.
Mr. Trump is not as vulnerable as reports of his weak polling results indicate. However, being less than wildly popular is not unusual for a president. Nor is it prohibitive to governing for four years and being re-elected.
Informative as approval polling may be, it is hardly predictive of the outcome of an actual race. While approval is a verdict on a person in isolation, a campaign is a verdict on a person in comparison. Mr. Trump won just such a comparison last November — and in an Electoral College blowout.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton was the prohibitive favorite — not just in November, but in the nominating primaries. Yet, things played out differently. The primaries were no walkover, and the general election was no victory.
For Mr. Trump to be legitimately presumed as weak now, the first question should be: Compared to whom? Mrs. Clinton’s primacy within the Democratic Party, but subsequent general election loss, implicitly indicates she came from a “weak bench.” And even a stronger Democratic nominee does not necessarily guarantee that he or she would make gains in the almost 6 percent of 2016 voters who supported neither major party’s candidate. Nor does it mean the candidate could turn the Electoral College against Mr. Trump — Mrs. Clinton could not, despite having more popular votes.
Another Clinton, Bill, further demonstrates Mr. Trump’s current position is not necessarily weak. Mr. Clinton won in 1992 with just 43 percent of the popular vote, well below Mr. Trump’s 2016 total. Two years later, Republicans won both houses of Congress in landslides — something they had not done in decades. Yet in 1996, Bill Clinton won re-election, despite again failing to get a popular vote majority.
All this shows it is not simply a president’s polls but his standing against an opponent that ultimately matters. And like Mr. Clinton in 1996, Mr. Trump in 2020 will have further advantages.
For one, his path to the nomination should be easier. Sitting presidents rarely face strong nomination challenges. Their defeat is rarer still: In the last 100 years, no president seeking renomination has failed to receive it.
In general elections, incumbency is only slightly less advantageous. In the last century, only three elected presidents — Herbert Hoover, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush — have lost re-election.
Mr. Trump is not as weak as current polling seems to indicate. He will have advantages in 2020 that he did not have in 2016. And Democrats are far from proving that they can field a better candidate against him than Hillary was last November.
It is increasingly apparent that Mr. Trump is a unique president as much as he was a unique candidate. The value of comparing his approval ratings to those of other presidents, when he himself is incomparable, is therefore dubious.
This does not mean Mr. Trump has created a new trend in presidential elections. It simply means he is at the confluence of several trends — both current and long-term — in American politics. In many cases, these trends favor him, just as they did so unexpectedly last November.
• J.T. Young served in the Treasury Department and the Office of Management and Budget and as a congressional staff member.
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