One consistent feature of Trump’s job approval rating is that it ping pongs up and down over the course of several weeks. When the approval rating increases, as a result of positive news or simply reversion to the norm, a series of events invariably occur to bring about a dip. When the rating drops, the negative news cycle inevitably burns out and the rating begins to tick back up, usually regaining whatever approval was lost during the dip.
The chart below measures the approval rating at the bottom of each dip to the highest point of the recovery. For most of 2018, Trump’s approval has ping ponged between 40% and 42%.
Now that we are less than one month from the election, the question is whether Trump will be in a dip or a recovery on election day. The difference of even a couple points may make a difference in how many seats Democrats can pick up in the House (An approval rating of 36% vs. 41% is worth ~20 seats). Even though 42% is low, it is Trump’s happy place, where half the country is not actively angry or concerned about his performance and the people in the middle (whoever is represented in that 2-4% of the country whose opinions keep ping ponging) are inclined to tell pollsters they approve of him. But when the rating is closer to 40% (and it dipped to 39% for a hand full of days last month) something has happened to put the country in a bad mood about Trump, and that mood could make the difference in close Mid-Term races.
Let’s look at the data.
The average duration of a Trump approval increase is 2.6 weeks after a dip has ended. The longest sustained increase was 8 weeks, from March to June, 2018, but most all of the others have only lasted 1-4 weeks. Trump’s previous dip (his 12th) ended on September 15. For the current rebound to last through the election it would have to last 8 weeks.
It’s not unreasonable to expect the quiet spell to last that long. Republicans and Trump have powerful motivation to keep things calm until Election Day. On September 2 Chuck Grassley tweeted: “My prayer is that our President can be as disciplined in his discourse and speeches like last two wks b4 his election/Then we will be successful in next two months like he was successful.”
But what might cause an approval dip to begin, and can Trump control those events? Here are the four categories of political events that correspond to these dips, with the percent of the 12 dips that each helped to drive. Note that 10 of the 12 dips were driven by 2-4 factors occurring simultaneously.
- Policy actions (either from the White House or the GOP congress)–67%
- Big events in the Russia investigation–67%
- Broken cultural or political taboos–50%
- White House chaos stories–33%
Let’s look at the likelihood of each of these factors flaring up in the next month.
White House Chaos
These stories usually stem from high profile firings, staff misbehavior, or very visible SNAFUs due to Trump’s unorthodox management style–all things that the White House can try to keep a lid on for at least a few weeks. Olivia Nuzzis’ wild story in New York Magazine published Monday is evidence the White House is sensitive to this. Staff believed she was going to write an article about how Trump was going to soon fire John Kelly, and Trump invited her into the Oval Office, and lined up Sara Sanders, Kelly, Pence, Pence’s chief of staff, and the Secretary of State, all to convince her: “We have a very smooth-running organization even though it’s never reported that way. So the real story is that. It’s really the real story. When you walk in here, you don’t see chaos. There is no chaos. The media likes to portray chaos. There’s no chaos.”
Taboos
For these to affect approval rating, there has to be an large national event–a White Power protest, a press conference with Putin, the death of a war hero–upon which Trump then immolates himself with a response that is completely at odds with the public sentiment. These are infrequent enough that we can assume it won’t happen before the election, especially since Congressional Republicans are begging Trump to behave.
Policy
This is not the season for Congress or the White House to push a policy agenda. Barring any unexpected situation that requires a policy response, and there is no guarantee that response would be perceived negatively, it is unlikely there will be many news cycles driven by policy details. One exception may be the Texas judge who is set to rule on Obamacare, invalidating all or parts of the law that protect people with preexisting conditions. One of Trump’s largest dips was in 2017 and resulted in part from Paul Ryan’s attempt to repeal Obamacare. If the judge rules before Election Day, it will cause a decline that will hurt many GOP candidates.
Russia Investigation
Trump has good reason to complain about the Russia Investigation because big breaks in the case have been major factors in 8 of his 12 approval dips. Mueller’s operation will run silent until after the midterms, but news could come from other sources. For example, someone in the intelligence community with a juicy piece of evidence could leak it to the press this month. On Twitter there are rumors (but aren’t there always?) that evidence may soon come out that proves Michael Cohen actually did go to Prague in 2016 to meet with Russian spies. Something like that, which would blow massive hole in the No Collusion narrative, would definitely start an approval dip. I find this the most likely scenario of the ones listed above.
But more likely than not, restrain and political survival instincts will make this a pretty quiet month in Trump world.