Donald Trump has a whole new problem
While many of us breathed a sigh of relief after Wisconsin finally released election returns on Monday night from the one they were forced to hold in person last week, we can expect the Trump regime to not be particularly happy with the results. While the Democratic primary largely went as pollsters predicted, the original intent of the Republican-dominated legislature who forced the election to take place against the governor’s wishes failed miserably.
People still showed up and Jill Karofsky, the liberal Supreme Court candidate, won by 11 points. To put it in the way Donald Trump saw things go down: Even with blatant voter suppression, people showed up and cast ballots overwhelmingly against the candidate that Trump endorsed – in a state he won by just over 22,000 votes four years ago.
It’s not just a state election with massive irregularities he has to worry about either. According to a new series of polls from Civiqs, he’s losing independents across the board. His inept response to the coronavirus outbreak hasn’t gone unnoticed – with 58% of independents disapproving of how Trump was handling it – an 11-point drop from two weeks ago. Asked about whether they felt the country was going in the right direction, independents overwhelmingly think it’s headed in the wrong direction – particularly in seven major battleground states: Arizona (39 right track-55 wrong track), Florida (41-53), Georgia (41-53), Michigan (39-55), North Carolina (41-53), Pennsylvania (37-47), and Wisconsin (39-55).
In fact, the map looked even worse when respondents were asked if they approved of Trump’s job as president – with up to 60% of independents in Arizona disapproving. Michigan respondents did approve by a very slim margin, 46-49, but that’s still down from 51% approval two weeks ago, which is slightly less than the margin he won with independents across the country in 2016. This means he’s losing voters that he definitely can’t afford to lose. No wonder he’s bragging about his ratings – it’s the only thing he has left to distract himself with.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making