In the preceding two articles I analysed the prospects that the Democrats could regain control of the House of Representatives. The combined effects of gerrymandering and partisan self-selection geographically mean the Democrats face a substantial burden to regain a majority in the House. Only if the Democrats can win at least 53 percent of the national popular vote for Congress do have they have a decent chance to attain a majority.
The success of the Democrats at the polls in mid-term years depends primarily on two things, whether their party holds the White House, and the President’s job approval rating. For the Democrats to reach that 53 percent floor needed to retake the House, President Trump’s job approval rating would have to fall to 32 percent or less.
While there have been occasional polls which put Trump’s approval in the low thirties, they have generally been outliers. I have taken all the polling data available at Huffington Post Pollster since the Inauguration and estimated simple trends that look like this:
The bottom line represents the trend for all adults interviewed in person. This is the sample used by Gallup, the most prolific pollster in this group. Registered voters, or citizens interviewed over the Internet, show a slight pro-Trump bias of about one and a half points. The top line shows the estimate for registered voters interviewed via the Internet. (Polls of so-called “likely voters” were not significantly different from all polls of registered voters.)
If we take the plunge and extrapolate these trends to the time of next year’s mid-term election (about 650 days in office), Trump’s job approval rating falls only two more percentage points, ranging from 34.6 to 37.9 percent depending on which trend is chosen. That is still short of the 32 percent threshold I estimated in the preceding two articles.
The results for registered voters should give the Democrats more pause. The citizens eligible to vote have a more positive view of the President than those who remain unregistered.
