Trump botched the pandemic response six ways to Sunday. Now it’s crippling his reelection
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America’s pandemic response is not only not getting better, it’s getting worse. And new polling out Friday shows that all but a masochistically loyal slice of Americans know Donald Trump has proven to be a dismal failure on the coronavirus.
Fully 67% of the public disapproves of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus, while only 33% approve, in a new ABC News/Ispos poll. In four months of polling the topic, the data represents Trump’s worst showing yet on the pandemic. Just last month, 58% disapproved while 41% approved, representing an overall negative shift of 17 points in a month.
The demographic shifts in the polling also suggest that Trump is alienating a variety of groups, instead of simply alienating the same ones in greater numbers. Both men and women now equally disapprove of Trump’s response at 66% and 67%, respectively, with men registering a double-digit increase in disapproval since last month.
Trump’s approvals on the virus have also fallen 8 points among white Americans without a college degree, with slightly more disapproving at 50% than approving at 49%.
Trump’s new push to open schools without explicitly offering any federal assistance to lay the groundwork likely won’t help him one iota with his slumping approval ratings. It’s like he took his failed strategy on reopening the economy and is now re-running the exact same play with kids and their families as his new guinea pigs. Now matter how it plays out, reopening schools is bound to be a chaotic mess under Trump’s “leadership” right in September as early voting gets started.
The fact that just 33% overall approve of Trump’s pandemic response may also be a telling number. The prospect of actual death and the increasing mayhem caused by the coronavirus in some of America’s deepest of red states may be stripping down Trump’s support to its barest levels—about a third of the country. In any sane world, that’s still too high, but it certainly puts Trump’s reelection prospects in dire straits.