Would Trump Voters Choose Him Again? A message from Ohio. by James Freeman
https://www.wsj.com/articles/would-trump-voters-choose-him-again-1497301080
Seven months later, how are Trump voters feeling about their decision? Gary Abernathy of Hillsboro, Ohio’s Times-Gazette was a rare newspaper editor who endorsed Donald Trump for President in 2016. On Friday, he provided an update from his community of 6,600 people:
Interestingly, the conservatives I speak with do not really consider Trump one of them. Rank-and-file Republicans tend to view Trump more as an independent who ran under the Republican banner.
But for the most part, they’re still with him. They appreciate Trump’s “America first” agenda, not because they believe in isolationism, but because they believe the U.S. and its citizens should be the government’s top priority.
The president’s tweets can be as annoying to his supporters as to his opponents, and if there is a common criticism it is that he should tweet less. But his inability so far to overhaul health care, enact tax reform, destroy the Islamic State or “drain the swamp” is largely blamed on overreaching courts and the open “resistance” that appears dedicated to opposing anything Trump wants.
The 2016 election made clear how little the average voter in the Midwest has in common with the average journalist on either coast. But your humble correspondent is struck by how much the Trump analysis offered by small-town Midwesterners squares with the view of Trump voters who live and work in Manhattan. Yes, there are a few, and just like the much larger population of Trump voters in Middle America, they understand his faults but tend to appreciate his goal of American revival.
Meanwhile back in Ohio, Mr. Abernathy finds that constant negative coverage of Mr. Trump in the national media is still not having the intended effect, and may even be backfiring:
While Trump carried Highland County heavily, there are people here who did not vote for him and who do not care for him. But overall, despite the avalanche of negative news stories, Trump’s support remains firm. Hillsboro’s mayor mentioned recently that he has noticed Trump yard signs popping up again, either in a show of support or a sign of defiance.
But are the good folks in Hillsboro really representative of the country—or even Ohio—in general? Mr. Trump’s approval ratings have never been good, and now they are downright awful. According to the polling average maintained by RealClearPolitics, Americans were almost evenly split between approval and disapproval of Mr. Trump in January. But now the nays have it by a margin of 17 percentage points.
This would suggest that Mr. Trump has been hemorrhaging political support. And maybe he has. Yet even as the President has inspired higher levels of disapproval, Americans have become slightly more optimistic. Another RealClearPolitics average shows that since Inauguration Day the percentage of Americans who think the country is moving in the right direction has modestly increased, while the number who believe we’re on the wrong track has declined. It seems that Americans don’t much care for Mr. Trump but think they might like his results.
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