Monday, December 25, 2017

Christmas bonus

My last post mentioned Trump's approval ratings among college graduates, but didn't show them.  Here they are, with a comparison to Obama at the same points in his presidency.



Trump's approval rating at the beginning was almost 30 points behind Obama's (36% vs. 66%).  Obama's approval declined substantially during his first year, so the gap has narrowed to 20 points (32% vs. 52%).  That's 14 points behind Obama's lowest approval rating (46% at the end of 2013). 

I mentioned "style" as a factor in relative approval in my last post, and one of the examples I was thinking of was Trump's blustering about how nations that voted against his policy in the UN had better not come asking for aid.  I haven't seen any polling results on this specifically, but I looked for parallels and found a question from 2001:  "Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? Countries that receive substantial military or economic aid from the United States should support U.S. positions when casting votes at the U.N."  The percent agreeing (of those who had an opinion), by education:

Not HS grad     88%
HS grad            92%
Some college   84%
College grad    74%
Grad educ        69%

Or to put it another way, about 10% of people who didn't attend college disagreed, vs. over 30% of people with graduate education. This survey was taken only a week or two after 9/11, which may have affected the totals--a survey in the mid-1990s found only about 55% agreeing on a similar question.  But I doubt that the circumstances would have much effect on the educational difference. 

[Source:  Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]

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