More polls? Yes, yes, I know, but these are worth noting as the question of mandates swirls and Democrats make more excuses for their failures. Not only did voters reject the Joe Biden status quo, they appear to be increasingly happy for having done so. 

And it's not just Emerson, but that's a good place to start. They find the electorate enjoying the outcome rather enthusiastically, including in Donald Trump's Cabinet selections. Trump now has his highest favorability rating ever in their series, while Joe Biden ... er ... 

The first post-election Emerson College poll finds President-elect Donald Trump’s favorability rating at 54%, a six-point increase from his pre-election favorability of 48%. President Joe Biden has a 36% job approval rating, a four-year low for the president in Emerson polls, while his disapproval rating remains steady at 52%.

“Trump’s favorability varies significantly by gender, race, and age,” Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling, said. “Trump’s strongest age cohort is among voters 40-59, with 60% viewing him favorably, compared to 48% among those over 70. Notably, his favorability has risen among younger voters, with 55% of those under 30 expressing a favorable opinion.”

Results in the key demos really have to sting Democrats:

• Men view Trump most favorably at 61%, compared to 48% of women. 
• 59% of white voters view Trump favorably, along with 53% of Hispanic voters, and 28% of Black voters.

Consider this in light of the raging hysteria propagated by Democrats and the Protection Racket Media during the past couple of years about Trump. They have specifically targeted women with their messaging by claiming that Trump wants to put them into Handmaid's Tale dresses and force them all to have Republican babies. Even after that relentless nonsense, nearly half of all women in this poll view Trump favorably. All the screams of raaaaciiiiism didn't keep Trump from picking up majority favorability among Hispanic voters and at least improving among black voters. 

That should prompt a lot of soul-searching among Democrats about demagoguery. It won't, I assure you, but it should. When either J.D. Vance or Ron DeSantis run four years from now, the same demagogues will assemble to claim that Trump was so much more reasonable about women and minorities than either of the two. 

Emerson includes an interesting data set in this poll about the expectations of voters in both camps. A slim majority of overall respondents said that the result did not surprise them (54/46), but that had wide variance based on who voters supported. Two-thirds of Kamala Harris voters were surprised by the results, while 71% of Trump voters were not surprised. That should prompt soul-searching among Democrat voters about the credibility of their party's leadership and that of the mainstream media -- and that will be more likely to happen than soul-searching among party leaders about their terrible demagoguery. 

As I mentioned earlier, this is not the only poll showing that Trump and the electorate are both enjoying a post-election afterglow. Jim Geraghty notes that both YouGov and CBS News polls are showing shockingly high levels of support for Trump during the transition. Along with his popular-vote win, the data show Trump has finally been normalized in the political environment -- which is bad news again for the demagogues:

If the election of Trump came as a shock to Democrats, it is perhaps even more shocking that, at least for now, a solid majority of Americans are giving the incoming president the benefit of the doubt. The latest Economist/YouGov poll found 51 percent of Americans have a very or somewhat favorable opinion of Trump, the highest level going back at least as far as the start of his first term as president. For a long, long stretch, that number was around 40 percent.

This weekend a CBS News poll found that 59 percent of Americans approve of how Trump is handling the transition. ... Trump won the second-highest number of votes for president ever cast, no one’s questioning the legitimacy of his victory, Democrats in the Senate are signing off on some of his cabinet picks, and he starts his second term with at least an initially high approval rating. Trump may not be normal, but he’s starting to look normalized.

The YouGov series also has another interesting result in the right/wrong direction responses. This is a little more subtle, but their last iteration before the election had it at 29/64 or -35. Two days after the election, it expanded to 25/66 (-41) and then 26/65 (-39) the next week. The most recent two weeks, though, the gap has narrowed to -27 and -29, and the wrong direction number dropped both weeks below 60% for the first time in any poll since September. 

Americans are approaching the new Trump term with cautious optimism. That might be a new normal that we could really appreciate after four years of Joe Biden's incompetence and demagoguery. Well ... most of us can, anyway. 

NEW: Liberals hold a ‘Primal Scream’ event at Lake Michigan to get their frustrations out of their system after the election.

Some in the group were seen jumping in the water after releasing their primal scream.

The group was apparently trolled by a Trump supporter waving a… pic.twitter.com/7sLy4AfQgy

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) November 27, 2024