Chicken's Coming to Roost for Trump?

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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Where do We Stand in 2021?

Happy New Year all.  I started writing this post last night as the numbers were trickling in from the Georgia runoffs last night.  I am surprised as anyone about the events of today.  I admit to finding it frightening that Trump's supporters would resort to occupying the U.S. capitol building.  We knew that this was a possibility as Trump refused to accept the results of the election.  WJAC-TV reports that over 500 people from Cambria, Blair, Somerset, and Bedford counties went to the rally.  The chair of the Cambria County Republican Party, Jackie Kulback, says that they left before the violence began.  Even if it were a peaceful protest they likely were exposed to COVID-19 and brought it back to their homes.

Since the election that Biden won, Trump's approval rating hardly changed from 45.9% to 44.1% today.  How sad it would be if they hardly change after today's events.  It would take about 4 day to a week before we know what impact it has had on his approval ratings.

Warnock and Ossoff have won their Senate races.  This means that the Democrats will technically be in control of the Senate and the House of Representatives once Biden and Harris take office on January 20.  The 50-50 split in the Senate (with Harris as the tiebreaking vote) gives the Democrats more leverage but the Republicans, with Mitch McConnell's leadership, still have the filibuster.  They can use it to block any meaningful legislation with only 40 votes.  

In 2013 McConnell used the filibuster to block a bill banning the use of assault rifles in the wake of the Newtown, CT shooting in which 26 people were killed.  The Democrats had a 54-46 majority at the time and the bill had strong support of the families in Newtown but it didn't matter.  There have 56 mass shootings in the US since then with 445 fatalities according to Mother Jones magazine.

Joe Biden will try to be a return to normalcy President.  Trumpism is unlikely to disappear entirely as it was present before he took office.  Trump's niece Mary says it best:

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Hate group activity down in the US but the Same in Pennsylvania

In the midst of the hoopla over Coronavirus, the Southern Poverty Law Center has come out with its annual hate map.  In 2019, they were tracking 940 hate groups which was down from 1,020 in 2018.  Adjusting for the US population, there were 2.86 groups per million in 2019 which was down from 3.12 groups per million in 2018.

For Pennsylvania, the number of hate groups that they are tracking has remained steady at 36 from 2017 to 2019.  The population adjusted adjusted numbers has remained steady at 2.81 groups per million residents which has been consistently less than the national rate.  Among the states and the District of Columbia, Pennsylvania ranks 29 in hate groups per million.

The numbers and rates are summarized in the table below.  The District of Columbia has had the highest rate of hate groups in the US since 2016 with a slight decrease in 2019 to 26.12 groups per million.  Montana had the second highest rate at 5.61 groups/million which was down from 6.59 groups/million.  Only 14 states had an increase in the hate group rate from 2018 to 2019. 

State	Hate Groups 2019	Population 2019	Hate groups per million '19	Hate groups per million '18	Hate groups per million '17	Hate groups per million '16	Hate groups 2016	Hate Groups 2017	Hate groups 2018
US	940	328,239,523	2.86	3.12	2.93	2.84	917	954	1,020
District of Columbia	19	705,749	26.92	38.44	37.47	30.83	21	26	27
Montana	6	1,068,778	5.61	6.59	7.62	9.59	10	8	7
Tennessee	38	6,829,174	5.56	5.32	5.51	5.71	38	37	36
Arkansas	15	3,017,804	4.97	4.65	3.99	5.35	16	12	14
South Dakota	4	884,659	4.52	7.93	8.05	8.09	7	7	7
Louisiana	21	4,648,794	4.52	4.51	2.78	2.99	14	13	21
Virginia	36	8,535,519	4.22	4.58	4.37	4.64	39	37	39
Mississippi	12	2,976,149	4.03	4.35	5.03	6.02	18	15	13
Washington	30	7,614,893	3.94	3.72	3.51	2.88	21	26	28
Idaho	7	1,787,065	3.92	5.70	6.99	7.13	12	12	10
Colorado	22	5,758,736	3.82	3.86	3.75	2.89	16	21	22
Georgia	38	10,617,423	3.58	3.90	3.84	3.10	32	40	41
Oregon	15	4,217,737	3.56	3.58	4.34	2.69	11	18	15
Missouri	21	6,137,428	3.42	3.92	2.94	3.94	24	18	24
Kentucky	15	4,467,673	3.36	2.91	2.47	5.18	23	11	13
Maryland	20	6,045,680	3.31	3.48	3.14	2.99	18	19	21
South Carolina	17	5,148,714	3.30	3.34	2.79	2.42	12	14	17
Alabama	16	4,903,185	3.26	4.71	4.72	5.55	27	23	23
Vermont	2	623,989	3.21	1.60	3.21	1.60	1	2	1
Florida	67	21,477,737	3.12	3.52	3.15	3.06	63	66	75
Nebraska	6	1,934,408	3.10	4.15	4.69	2.62	5	9	8
Delaware	3	973,764	3.08	2.07	2.08	4.20	4	2	2
North Carolina	32	10,488,084	3.05	3.85	3.11	3.06	31	32	40
Indiana	20	6,732,219	2.97	3.59	4.65	3.92	26	31	24
New Hampshire	4	1,359,711	2.94	7.37	6.70	4.50	6	9	10
Nevada	9	3,080,156	2.92	3.30	3.00	1.36	4	9	10
Arizona	21	7,278,717	2.89	2.79	3.14	2.60	18	22	20
Hawaii	4	1,415,872	2.83	3.52	0.70	0.00	0	1	5
Pennsylvania	36	12,801,989	2.81	2.81	2.81	3.13	40	36	36
Alaska	2	731,545	2.73	5.42	5.41	0.00	0	4	4
Michigan	27	9,986,857	2.70	3.10	2.91	2.82	28	29	31
Ohio	31	11,689,100	2.65	3.08	2.66	3.01	35	31	36
North Dakota	2	762,062	2.62	3.95	2.65	1.32	1	2	3
Wisconsin	15	5,822,434	2.58	2.58	1.90	1.56	9	11	15
Oklahoma	10	3,956,971	2.53	2.28	2.54	1.53	6	10	9
New Jersey	21	8,882,190	2.36	2.02	1.89	1.68	15	17	18
New York	44	19,453,561	2.26	2.41	2.42	2.38	47	48	47
Connecticut	8	3,565,287	2.24	1.68	1.67	1.40	5	6	6
West Virginia	4	1,792,147	2.23	2.77	2.20	2.18	4	4	5
California	88	39,512,223	2.23	2.10	1.90	2.01	79	75	83
Massachusetts	15	6,892,503	2.18	2.03	1.46	1.76	12	10	14
Texas	63	28,995,881	2.17	2.54	2.33	1.97	55	66	73
Minnesota	12	5,639,632	2.13	2.14	2.15	1.81	10	12	12
Illinois	26	12,671,821	2.05	2.43	2.66	2.50	32	34	31
Wyoming	1	578,759	1.73	1.73	1.73	3.42	2	1	1
Utah	5	3,205,958	1.56	2.85	0.97	0.98	3	3	9
Maine	2	1,344,212	1.49	3.74	2.25	2.25	3	3	5
Kansas	3	2,913,314	1.03	4.81	1.37	2.41	7	4	14
Iowa	3	3,155,070	0.95	0.95	1.27	1.28	4	4	3
Rhode Island	1	1,059,361	0.94	1.89	2.83	0.95	1	3	2
New Mexico	1	2,096,829	0.48	0.00	0.48	0.96	2	1	0

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