On Jan 6 I posted my reaction to the shocking events at the U.S. Capitol that day. I wondered what would happen to Trump's approval ratings as his other antics have had minimal effect on them throughout his presidency. Now it seems like I have an answer now that there are three days left for him in power.
The graph above shows a sharp drop in the Real Clear Politics (RCP) average in approval rating polls since Jan 6. Trump's approval rating was 44.2% that day. Today it is 39.7%, the sharpest decline in his term. This rating is still 2.7% ahead of the lowest his average approval rating has been back in December 2017.
Rasmussen (a Republican polling firm) estimates his approval rating to be 48% which is by far the highest of any of the major polling firms. They limit their sample size to likely voters where the other firms sample from all adult Americans or from registered voters.
Nate Silver's website FiveThirtyEight estimates his average approval rating to be 38.7% which is 1% lower than the RCP average. They weight their polls by the their quality based on sample size and bias in the selection. They rate some polls such as ABC News/Washington Post as A grade and others such as Economist/Yougov as B. Rasmussen is rated as C+. Otherwise the trend in the poll average for FiveThirtyEight mirrors that of the RCP.
It remains to be seen what will happen in the upcoming impeachment trial of Trump. Sixty seven Senators will have to vote to convict him to bar him from ever holding office again. The decline in his approval ratings may give 17 GOP Senators the courage to vote with the 50 Democrats to do so as it gave 10 GOP House members the courage to break with the rest of their party to impeach.
Nixon's approval rating was 25.1% before he resigned when GOP senators told him the game was up. Democracy Now has a discussion on what happens next for Trump with historian Tim Snyder. He does face state level investigations for which he cannot be pardoned either by himself or by his successor. Snyder says he believes the best option for Trump would be to leave the country.
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