Understanding Trump's Political Resilience

Two graphs reveal how much American politics has changed.

Here’s a graph of President Trump’s RCP average so far.

Compare that to his first term, when his net approval rating was almost 20 points underwater by this point in time.

While his approval rating has slipped from the highs of his inauguration, it has not fallen nearly as sharply during his second term. Perhaps even more strikingly, his raw approval rating of 45% is higher than his approval rating almost ever was during his first term.

This is particularly notable, because Trump’s second term has been far more disruptive than the first. So I thought I would look at some possible reasons for this relative polling resilience.

A different prologue: The context for Trump’s second term is radically different from that of his first term. Trump first entered the Oval Office after an Electoral College inside-straight, losing the popular vote but eking out narrow wins in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan to seize the White House. The Trump-Clinton slugfest caused Barack Obama’s own approval rating to rocket upward. Trump first became president in a structurally weak position.