Do not be swayed, Mark Mitchell warns, by legacy media polling, giddy with joy at their ability to report and spin Donald Trump’s first 100 days in his second term. The important numbers, Rasmussen Reports chief pollster said on Washington Watch Monday, are in response to the direction of the country – not the approval of the President.
The “direction” numbers tell a far different story, according to Mitchell. The surface numbers show a dent in the armor, a decrease in the adoration shown to Trump on Nov. 5 when he blew away Kamala Harris, winning all seven swing states enroute to 312 electoral college votes and winning the popular count by more than 2 million votes.
Donald Trump has the lowest 100-day job approval rating of any president in the past 80 years, with public pushback on many of his policies and extensive economic discontent, including broad fears of a recession, according to a new ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll, ABC News reported on Sunday.
Thirty-nine percent of poll respondents said they approve of how Trump is handling his job as president, down six percentage points from February, while 55% said they disapprove. The previous low in approval for a president at or near 100 days in office, in polls dating to 1945, was Trump's 42% in 2017, ABC reported.
Perhaps most threatening to Trump, given his promise of an economic turnaround, is the extent of negative views on the economy: 72% said they think it's "very likely" or "somewhat likely" that his economic policies will cause a recession in the short term, the network said.
ABC is far from the only media outlet to have polled Trump’s first 100 days. So did NBC, CBS and other outlets whether traditional media or new media.
Pouncing on the prez with polls
Mitchell describes legacy media polling as one big “psychological operation” with manipulated results.
“You look at Google's search volume, you can go look at Google Trends, and you can see that people are searching for the term 'Trump approval' now pretty much more than they ever have," Mitchell told show host Jody Hice. "And for some reason, 'Trump approval' is way more interesting than 'Biden approval,' 'Obama approval,' or 'Bush approval' ever was.
"So, that's telling me people are seeing headlines, they're hearing stories, they're getting push notifications to their phones.”
Such search numbers, he continued, are the result of media companies working hard to get their work before readers and viewers. “It’s all the mainstream media trying to undermine Trump to convince you that he's not popular,” Mitchell added.
Another telling sign is that so many of these outlets didn’t bother with polling from the time of the inauguration until this benchmark of 100 days, Mitchell noted.
“All of a sudden, six of the pollsters dumped polls over the weekend that were really horrible for Trump. It’s the same kind of people who were six, seven, and even eight points to the left of me back in the fall. So, what I consider is they probably just waited and said, ‘Hey, I got a little surprise for Trump on his hundred days.’”
Know the right numbers
There’s no doubt that Trump’s approval numbers are in fact lower. Rasmussen Reports shows him at 47% right now.
Trump took office with an approval rating of 56%. Before January was complete the number of 50%. It bottomed out at 47% from April 8-10 when Trump was making rapid-fire decisions on tariffs. Trump was at 52% on April 21.
Rassmussen is the only outlet that polls approval ratings on a daily basis, Mitchell said.
“If you take the first six months of Obama's first term away, and look at the rest of his polling, that's pretty much where Trump approval has been and is going to be. We're in a situation where it's like peak threat of violence, people are really politically divided. You’re never going to see a Trump 60% approval rating, but I don't think it's going to drop below 45% either.”
More important than job approval ratings are responses to a different question, says the pollster: Do you think the country is heading in the right direction?
Forty-two percent of likely U.S. voters believe the country is heading in the right direction, according to the latest Rasmussen poll ending April 24.
“'Right direction' polling is setting records on a weekly basis now, because Americans are finally getting what they voted for,” Mitchell explained.
Rasmussen has been tracking America’s pulse for 20 years and has often found displeasure. As a rule, “right direction” falls below “wrong direction” when likely voters respond.
Only one week has “right direction” exceeded “wrong direction,” and that was in mid-March of this year.
“It got up to 48%, the highest it's ever been in our polling history. Now it's setting a record for 13 consecutive weeks, 42% or higher. The previous record was only seven weeks,” Mitchell said.
The power of populism
The strength in the “right direction” numbers is because Trump is an “economic populist,” Mitchell said.
Where Trump can take the economy from this slow start with tariffs remains to be seen. There have been price increases, disruptions and fears of looming economic instability. The administration contends that American jobs will increase as balance is restored to trade relationships.
Time will tell.
“The general trend has been that Trump was elected because the American dream – our futures, the ability to put food on the table, to form families, to buy affordable houses … all that stuff – has been stolen and shipped overseas. Americans understand that,” Mitchell noted.
